Playing around with my current installations of EasyLFS I found another ls-tool.

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In Windows they are used for a long time already, but most Linux-users probably don't even know that their system supports them too. Access Control Lists (ACLs) extend the regular permissions we all know with the possibility to give permissions for specific users/groups.

With a little example I want to show how to use ACLs in Linux.

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Soo, its over a week since my exams ended \o/… now I just have the long wait for results day near the end of August. So, now I have time to write a long overdue blog post. There are two things that make this blog post different to previous ones…

Firstly I’ve started using the microblogging service identi.ca again. For the uninitiated, identica (I never know whether to include the full stop or not) is basically a free software version of twitter, which uses an open protocol. (The software is actually called laconica, and anyone on one laconica instance can follow anyone on any other laconica instance.) I’m not on twitter because, most the people who’d want to read my messages (people in the free software/open tech movement) are on identica (or some other laconica site) anyway.

I’m not entirely sure how to use identica yet. I don’t mean with regards to the technical aspect, type 140 characters or less into a box on the website, or in a client such as Gwibber, and you’re away. No, I mean what to type, how, and when in order to make it most useful for me. At the moment I’m probably overusing it a little at the moment, but I think what it boils down to for me is a notebook. A notebook that is published for others to see, should they find it interesting. But equally, a notebook for me to look back at. For example, I’m writing this blog posts using some of my notices as reference (tags make this especially useful. I don’t know if you can show tags for just one user yet though).

And the second thing? I’m writing this blogpost using yet another different keyboard layout, colemak. This is the second time that I have switched layout, the first being to dvorak. Colemak is still slightly less popular than dvorak (it is third after dvorak and qwerty). So what made me switch? The fact that I had several weeks to spend doing something rather pointless… well kindof. But colemak does have some nice benefits. Your fingers move much less than on either qwerty or dvorak (dvorak places emphasis on hand alternation instead). But what really sets colemak apart from dvorak? Its pragmatism.

Okay, I’m not sure that’s quite the right word, but it sounds good. Basically, whereas dvorak moves keys, including punctuation, all over the place, making it harder and more formidable to learn, colemak moves only letter keys and not all of them at that. Many of the loss common keys, especially those on the bottom row, are in exactly the same place as in qwerty. This is ro much so (especially to the far left) that I showed the layout to a friend, who said, “thats not much different to a normal keyboard”. That would never happen with dvorak.

This may be a silly thing to be picking up on, but its important. As much as I like to be weird and different, it would be great if more people started trying more efficint layouts. Not only is colemak easier to learn coming from qwerty, it also simply looks less intimidating - making perple more likely to give it a go.

Confession time. I didn’t actually find colemak any easier to learn than dvorak, but that is because i was previously using dvorak full time, and dvorak and colemak are *very* different. However, the similarity to qwerty did manifest itself in a different way: it was much much easier to switch between colemak and qwerty than it had been between dvorak and qwerty. In fact, for the first couple of days, whilst I was learning, I used qwerty at night to type faster to people.

This is in *massive* contrast to dvorak. Whilst dvorak destroyed my qwerty skills at first, and i never properly recovered them, using colemak actually seems to have improved my qwerty typing! This ability to have both the common and the efficient layout at a good proficiency, without them conflicting inside your mind, is what really sets colemak apart from dvorak in my opinion. The fact is, as efficint as a layout might be, you’re still going to run into qwerty quite often in this society we are in, and colemak allows you to have the best of both worlds.

I’ve been practising and learning colemak for just over a week now. Its now very usable, although, maybe not as fast as I would like. More than good enough for writing an 800 word blog post. And, the problem in my case is not with colemak itself, it is coming to it from the weirdness of dvorak.

So, do I think most people will be using colemak it any time soon? No, afraid not. However, I do think its a great alternative, and hopefully, as aproachable as it is, will attract a growing userbase, in the geek community at least.

As you probably know, Michael Jackson passed away recently. This has been a great shock for all of us. Well, a lot of us, anyway.

When you think about it, that is slighly peculiar. The death has slapped even my generation, grown in the 90s, living in the 00s, hard in the face. This is not because we greatly admired the man. This is not because we love the music he made. Even though my generation also knows that he created great music, his days as king are not something we remember or can relate to — he had a much greater value: he had become a kind of constant. His superhuman appearance, like a conservational shell, and constantly in the news in some dodgy way. His days as “King of Pop” long gone, he still remained as a kind of media ghost. And since Harry Potter, we all know that ghosts can't die.

To most of us, Michael Jackson was a kind of odd fact of life in the universe. An ever-resting quirk, an easter egg in the great game of life. That someone like that could die is just overwhelming.

Yesterday one of the crazy ones has died too early. One of those who people who dared to be different and to be the most of himself no matter what others said, no matter the teasing and bullying, misunderstanding and dishonesty. This made him one of the most famous people in the world, albeit possibly one of the most misunderstood. He is the living proof of how powerful a human being can be if he steps out of the fold. This world needs more of the crazy ones.

Ironically, it took his death for me to realize some of the things about him and even discover one of his songs I didn’t know about. I heard his songs so many times, they were impossible to avoid, but not being a big fan of pop I always somehow took it for granted, and all of the incredible intellectual changes I’ve gone through recently, rediscovering the world changing power of Michael Jackson somehow just didn’t come around. And now I regret this.

However I am now newly inspired and motivated.

Here are a few incredible world changing songs by Michael Jackson. Let them live on.

Feel free to suggest more in the comment. And let the legend live long in our memeverse!