I'm pleased to announce the addition of a new section to the site's content: "Joshp's Poetry". The content of this section will NOT, by default, be promoted to the Front Page of Nous Essence, nor will it be, by default, featured on the main feed for the site. But you may see, from time to time, snippets of the work which I decide are nice enough to promote appear in your reader if you are a subscriber to the main site feed. If you are interested in subscribing to the poetry/prose feed directly, just click on this link.

I have been writing poetry, prose, lyrics, short fictions, and literary experiments for the better part of 15 years, and have now decided to filter through the entire existing body of my work, burn the terrible word-vomiting, and publish and/or rework anything that I feel deserves attention. If you subscribe, I look forward to your comments and your support!

SPAM! Why should I have to worry about spam, right? This is a pretty low traffic site (sigh) and who's going to spam on me? I had a post a bit ago about passing a spam right of passage and enabling a bit of security to get around it. Well, the spam dude was not done with me yet! No sir, I kept getting hit, kept having traffic eaten by spam-spewing robo-jerks, and it was getting pretty tiring having to isolate every ip, and then ban them one...at...a...time. So, I overhauled my security and thought I would actually spell out here exactly how I set it up...

So, as promised, here are the steps I took to get Ubuntu 8.04 - hardy Heron installed on my Asus EeePc 701 4G Surf. I will include BOTH the steps I took and, when applicable, popular alternate steps available. Also, I will include the steps required to get the "Kiddshop touchscreen (from Kiddshopp on ebay) working.

This is not a definitive How-To, it is just what I did, what I found to work. I encourage anyone who finds better ways, or finds a glaring mistake in to PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!
The contents of this post are pretty long, so use the "read more" link to go to the instructions.
That said...Here we go!

Tonight I write from a stance of (near) total victory. This post is to mark the fact that I have accomplished installing and 'properly' configuring Ubuntu 8.04, code named Hardy Heron, on my EeePC with a fully functional, self installed touchscreen. I am using the Ubuntu "Netbook Remix", and it ROCKS the Touchscreen!!

Next, to install internal bluetooth and GPS (and hopefully a nice 16G usbflash!). These potenitial future mods are the reason for the "near" in "near victory".

I plan on writing up the steps I took, and comparing them against some of the (terrible) info out there after the 4th, which is today. Please check back for more!

Yay me.

Well, I did it!

What did I do? I successfully added on a touch-screen to my EEE PC, that's what!

It's been all quiet on my blog for quite some time, so I thought I should make a post. I should blame school for this, but the fact of the matter is that I am just not so certain as to what direction to take this blog. I know I have the whole "technical progress" thing, which is fun, but doesn't fill what I am hungry for.
I do have my family, and ultra-personal things I could publish here, which I could do for hours, but I think I rather keep some things from the public arena. I also feel like I betray privacy when I get out to blog about my family. I suppose I am feeling out what I am comfortable publishing here on that level. I also feel there is only egotism involved in blogging about myself, and believe you me, my ego is pretty big as it is.
Socio-Political? This is easy. Almost toooooo easy. Seriously, who wants another rant-blog/opinion piece collection? I have some very strong opinions and ideas there, some bordering on the anarcho-communist, and some not quite so extreme. But I want to put out GOOD ideas, not just Angry ideas, and it seems that most political blogs are either angry or bereft with tunnel-vision. That is certainly not what I want to appear as. I think I might open up some forum space for that. I know there is ONE reader interested in that sort of EXCHANGE.

And here we have it, EXCHANGE. The platform I am using for this site is based off of communal exchange, community building, not just blogging or serving up the occasional media file. Exchange. This is what Drupal is good for. And I don't mean the blase` social networking sites like facebook or myspace. While they have their place, it seems that while they benefit from and, in a very nominal way enhance social bonds, they seem to me to be not much more than predatory spaces doing little more than exploiting existing social relationships and providing space for egocentrical expression without providing a means to, or encouraging the exchange of socially relevant content.
Let me explain that: social networking sites capitalize on pre-existing relationships and affiliations to build a user base. In essence they do nothing more than attempt to take the place of the "face" of the relationship, to become the channel in which the relationship is expressed without actually providing any new content. You see, it does nothing new and nothing more than attempt to exploit people's ego and egotism. While this is fine for them, and I am sure has its place...somewhere... What I would like to see, and would love to be a part of is something entirely different. Some thing which does not simply take advantage of existing networks, but promotes the formation of NEW networks based on the EXCHANGE of socially relevant, substance based CONTENT.
Another way to view these two differing ideas is to look at them as recipies which create similar dishes. In one, you start with pre-existing social networks, and you add an avenue of egocentric expression, and you get an online community. The other you start by promoting substance based content, provide an avenue of relating the content to other pieces of content, and you get a totally new community. Drupal is a brilliant platform for this. Community building based off of content, and the exchange of relevant content. Substance, not ego.

I think that is why it has been so quiet around here this month. I am looking to build a substance based site, with a focus on community and the exchange of relevant content. So I have been really muling over the direction I want. Really trying to keep things from being "all about me", and trying to brew up a good direction that still leaves the site open-ended enough to take on new avenues of thought and expression.
I want ideas to live and grow here, not just ego.
I could now go into a piece about how I think that the contrast between substance and ego is the very thing that is spurring degradation of our culture, our politics and our lives in general...but I will not. I will, perhaps, work on that as an opinion piece, and give it its own little place to live. I will leave it at that for now.
So, it seems as if the content here, is the concept of content itself. H'm. Content based content. Stop. In the end all things degrade down into nothingness. So, in the spirit of the totally confusing nature of thing/nothingness, I now have a blog/site which is content based in its intent, but has absolutely no direction for that content. In other words, it is a site for substantial ideas, not egos...but it is about nothing in particular and is totally fine with a purely egocentric expression, just so long as the egotism comes after the substance in the content, and doesn't try to create substance in order to validate the ego into content. Well, it makes sense to me...

Well, so Drupal 6 came out yesterday, the day of my daughter's birthday! Right, so I did absolutely nothing with Drupal, but we took Savannah shopping, and I made her favorite dinner, and we all went to go see a cheesy movie. :) She's 11!
((and I'm feeling old))

Ok, so in an effort to improve my blog's visibility, and the site's visibility in general, I am using technorati. My profile being a typical Technorati Profile.
What else have I done? Well, there is a module called "XML sitemap" that allows you to submit the sitemap with google, microsoft, yahoo, ask.com and the like every time you run cron, and I registered the site with google. I've also been linking to this thing from everywhere I can (my Ubuntu and Launchpad profiles, different social networking profiles, etc) and if this is not enough, which it is not, I plan on registering the site with Drupal, just have to get a site slogan and mission statement down first.
And why do all of this? Easy, when my people google "clearvision" or "joshp's blog" i really would like this to be in the top 10. It sort of makes me feel special, and we all like to feel special.
if anyone out there reading this has any tricky ways to be more visible, share thine wealth of knowledge and use the comments!

What do you do when you try to access your drupal site from school and all you get are blank white pages with no source and the absence of any 404 error or whatever? You promptly go outside, and smoke a dozen cigarettes, unless you just quit, then you clench your teeth together and freak out as quietly as you can. Then you go home, and realize that your page.tpl.php file had the wrong permissions and everything is soo happy, all the data is still there, all the sql tables all in their right place...ahhhhhhhhhh. But you still don't get to smoke.

Well, I almost did it. As a matter of fact, I did do it, for a little bit...I sold out. One of the reasons I made this site was to stay away from using any 3rd party hosted services. I wanted to be able to host my own site, with my own blog, calendar, forums, picture gallery, and anything else (the promise of a podcast or webcast, a streaming radio station...all sorts of things sound like fun, right?). Something nice about having it all right here, on my own server, my own connection, my own installation.