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Chrome OS install, hints and tips & my first experience

Horay! Chrome OS is out at http://www.chromium.org/
You can preview it a bit here http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/googles-chrome-os-revealed/

First you need to go to install all the pre-requisites to compile it on your Linux system listed here http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuildInstructionsPrerequisites – OR
If you run ubuntu just do this
wget http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/build/install-build-deps.sh
sh install-build-deps.sh (hit Y near the end when it wants to install binutils-gold ok?)

Download the tar.gz from here http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/archives/chromiumos-0.4.22.8.tar.gz
Or grab the git repo

sudo apt-get install git-core
mkdir [chromiumos]
cd [chromiumos]
gclient config http://src.chromium.org/git/chromiumos.git
gclient sync

Note: This process may appear to hang while downloading the kernel source. It may take anywhere up to 10-20 minutes before you get more feedback

Follow the build instructions here http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/building-chromium-os/build-instructions.

Once its booted up and running, you will realize very quickly its just a bootable web browser. There’s nothing else installed or to install. No logout button, no shutdown, no nothing.
If you are cunning like me and want to play then nothing like a ctl+alt+t to bring up a terminal then use your sudo to get root access. (no tutorials on this, if you dont know the power of sudo you shouldn’t be messing with things!)

First thing i noticed was that the main root file system was mounted what seems to be read-only. This i can only presume is for speed (and it is blimmin fast!) amoung other things.

The home directory was mounted read-write however to allow for downloading etc.
Package management or editing system files is impossible without remounting the root filesystem as read-write
mount -o remount,rw /

It appears to be based on Ubuntu, and its so cut down nothing much is installed. However in saying this, its still 589MB on disk when installed, which considering the fact that its not actually running anything other than a web browser, that’s pretty shocking. I can get a full debian install with xwindows and basic apps in that size fairly easily. Perhaps they havn’t had time to strip more garbage from it yet?
I noticed when its running that its using 653MB of my 1GB RAM, and has no swap at all. I presume its entirely running in RAM which contributes to its speed.

Catch 22, ChromeOS uses your google user/pass to login, if you use this then it will automatically log you in to your google acct at the same time, however, Wireless networking doesn’t come up until you are logged in (WPA key) .

I decided I wanted to add another offline user, so i did. My default username/password was chronos/chronos and i didn’t want that (yes downloaded a precompiled image). I added myself a user, then added my user to the admin,video,etc groups identical to the main user. I was still not able to login using this user which sucked, so i copied the homedir over from the first user to the second.

Still no go, so i checked in /etc for hard coded user names and found a few
/etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml had the homedir to be mounted hard coded into it
/etc/init.d/start_login.sh has export USER=firstusername
/etc/init.d/session_manager.sh has su firstusername -c “/etc/init.d/start_login.sh ${MCOOKIE}”
/etc/acpi/lid.sh has export HOME=/home/firstusername

I edited all these to point to the new username, also copied the firstusername to secondusername homedir, chown’d all the files and grep -r’d and changed all instances of username hard coding.

Whilst editing these files i noticed that the pam_mount.conf contained information for mounting the home directory as an encrypted area.
I rebooted and hoped like heck after editing it would all go well. I should mention here that I’m using my 701 EEE PC laptop here, its a great test bed for lots of things.

After reboot i was still unable to login as the new user, so i checked directories other than /etc and found /usr/lib/chomeos-cryptohome/common

At this point, im tired, its late on a sunday evening and i never quiet got it the other user going. Since i need that offline user account to login before my WPA key/WIFI works, i will pursue this one further, for now im heading to bed (may update post later)

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Social Media – #sy (Simon Young) – My Opinion

Much like SEO marketing, most of its pretty much abiding by a few simple rules, however there seem to be those who really get on the band wagon, enjoy doing things, and raking in big money for it.

Whilst some Social Media Marketing does work better then when you use tricks like AV equipment rental, – and does bring in business, you cant forget core values of marketing. things like having a target market rather than just going viral (does anyone recall #moonfruit? ok what did their company actually do? don’t remember? don’t worry, nobody else does either!) .

A few days back the #sy tag started showing up on twitter, people just appended it randomly to any old sentence it seems. Unsure about other people but i dont live my entire life on twitter so somewhere along the line i missed what the heck it was all about.
It seems i wasn’t the only one! I asked a couple of times what it was about with no answer, as it seems did quiet a few others. The most we got told was ‘all will be revealed Friday night!’ etc and similar.

Once a few people started doing it everyone jumped on the bandwagon, in fact i saw a couple of tweets saying ‘no idea why i changed my avatar to have #sy, i have no idea what it is, everyone else was doing it!’. Others thought something big and cool was coming also but didnt know what it was.
I got an invite to something on facebook which, again, failed to say anything about what it was other than ‘Race to Carista’ which meant nothing to me at all, and to watch the #sy hashtag on twitter.

About 24-48 hours out from the ‘main event’ i saw more and more people getting pissed off with all the mentions of #sy and no idea what it was, one went as far as unfollowing anyone using the hashtag, and others were getting rather annoyed at the whole thing.
I noticed that generally people aged 12-30 were on the #sy bandwagon (students, etc) and that people from 30ish upwards were the ones generally more annoyed at the spammyness.

Finally Friday rolles around, and we get told its just a Media Company http://www.ijump.co.nz renaming their company, oh yeah and the Carista thing was some house for sale. They wanted to prove how effective Social Media was by having people in the house and doing live stuff online whilst showing off an expensive house which was for sale (re-worded in my own words).

Now, heres what went wrong (in my opinion). Only a select few seemed to know or get an invite into this house and were told ahead of time, how can you advertise something without letting people know WHAT you are advertising? if people ask, at least give them a teaser of something to look forward too.
Secondly, its a house worth at least $1,000,000 – Target market would be either business people with a bit of money, of family etc. majority of the people on twitter i saw whom went, did not have that kind of money, and were not in the market for a house. Whilst there may have been people at the house who were interested, how did they relate to twitter? How did it relate to all those who had been using the #sy tag and were waiting for something exciting to happen?
There were about 3 or 4 people tweeting with the #sy tag, the entire thing was pretty disjointed cut down versions of what i’m sure were riveting speeches. With 140 Chars the message just didn’t make it.
I had a few people dm me asking me what it was about, what was going on, and were very disappointed that they had changed avatar, somehow got roped into something that never happened.
The problem here was they advertised it as something twitter based, when in fact there was very little twitter interaction at all, and no socializing at all to do with twitter, anyone who asked questions were ignored pretty much.
As one person said to me “I was curious about what they were up to – but after being all mysterious, just turns out to be some navel gazing for the selected few”

Now this there is a lot of harping on about how Social Media is going to be the new magic on your business, and with a few golden rules which are pretty much common sense. I don’t believe you need a course to learn it, though having one person working for a company who knows what they are doing and has the right personality is definitely advised (if you have an employee who already does so, by all means use them!)
Be friendly.
Don’t do generic auto tweets or bots.
Don’t argue with people or put them down (what you say reflects on your company).
Try and keep the same person/people on deck and make them helpful, friendly, and let them interact and personalize it .
Its called social networking for a reason, its socializing, not an advertising platform like a newspaper, tv, or magazine, hence why the different rules.

I must stress, these are very much my own opinions and impressions, and i do not dislike or have any grudges or mean any insult to those involved at all, it was more a deconstruction and interpretation of what i saw happen. A lot of the people involved were people i consider friends, and i mean no disrespect at all to them, or anyone else.
Because i realize there may be some personal fallout for me because of the blog post, i have respected those who i talked to privately and left their names off, feel free to voice your own opinion here.
ps. Still unsure what the ‘Race’ was in the ‘Race to Carista’

Posted on

Inspiration and weight loss

A lot of people say im inspirational because i lost a lot of weight, to me it was just something i did, like going to the dairy to get bread. I did it for me, not for anyone else, i dont see the big deal as much as others.
If you want some inspiration, then let me tell you about a guy i knew from the weight loss forums.

After loosing several hundren pounds of weight, i think about 200-300, he let felt ‘ok’ about letting a few of us know exactly what he had gone through.
He was laid off from work because he was no longer fit for work, thats how fat he was. Unable to do his job and stuck on a sickness benifit supported by the state. This is when it hit home for him. He decided to change his life, starting with diet of 800 calories of protien, and as much fruit & veg he was hungry for. As for exercise he started with walking. It was the only thing he could do and he wasnt even able to do much of that.
Every morning he got up, slathered both thighs and his belly with butter or oil or something he could find that would lubricate, put on his hoody with pockets in the front, and walked. He started out doing 10 minutes and being puffed and slowly got better and walked longer.
He would always be sweating and hot from the exercise but never took off the hoodie. When he walked he chafed, thighs would chaf, hanging belly would rub, he would be raw and bleeding. This is why he used the oil and butter. Even with it he would often finish in extreme pain. The hoodie disguised the fact that his hands were not just in his pockets, but wedged under his belly holding it up so it chafed a little less so he could go just a little bit longer.
When i read what he posted, the things he went through just to loose weight, it almost made me cry. How can you possibly thing I did such a great thing? look what he went through? its far more hardship than i ever did, i feel lazy in comparison.
This man came from an obese family, and went on to finally inspire his brother to loose weight. That brother died of obesity related problems after only loosing 50-100lb , he simply started too late. He was young and married and had children, his heart could simply not sustain him. It was extremely upsetting for him to watch his brother die, knowing that he was on his way to good health. The hardest part was that his brother passed on the stairs, and they were unable to move him to treat him due to his size.

So if that’s you, then don’t leave it too late. Time to act is now.