Continue reading »]]> Over the last few months, I’ve started using this trick with my To-Do list; I give every task a point value and I do 10 points of stuff each week night. This is kind of arbitrary, but I take the number of minutes to complete a task and divide by 10. If the task is kind of fun, I cut that number in half. But if the task is pretty terrible, I double it. Neutral tasks are unmodified.

So biking is something I know I should do and it takes about 40 minutes, so it should be a 4 but I like doing it so I call it a 2. On the other hand cleaning out the sink only takes 10 minutes so it should be a 1 but I hate it, so it’s a 2. Laundry takes 20 (active) minutes and it’s kind of neutral, so it stays a 2. That’s how I do it, you should find something that works for you.

Everyday, I sit down with my planner and look at the stuff that has to be done that night (appointments, high-priority tasks) and anything that’s really pressing (grocery shopping, laundry) and put those things down and give them points as described above. It that total is over 10, I start cutting the least important things. If the total is under 10, I look at my backlog and find one or more tasks to fill that gap. My backlog is just where I write down everything that doesn’t have a specific time-frame, but I want to get done someday.

This system has a few advantages that reduce the psychic load of figuring out what to do and doing it. It lets you know when you’ve given yourself enough to do – once I have 10 points and I stop planning and start working on stuff. It gives me confidence that when I put something down as “I will do this tonight”, I’m reasonably confident I will do it. And when I put something on my backlog, I know I’ll get to it when I can. Because I’m doing stuff every night, I make progress at a steady rate. But because I’m not doing too much, I don’t burn out. It helps with planning and can justify putting off a task – not procrastinating – but saying “I have four things that really need my attention tonight, so cleaning the kitchen can wait a day”.

The best part of this system is Being Done. You’ll never actually be done, there’s always more to do. But you’ll get that 10th point and you’ll get the Being Done feeling – this day has been productive and if I sit down and play Minecraft for the next 3 hours, I’ll still go to bed feeling accomplished. And wanting that feeling keeps me excited each night to get through my list quickly so I can relax and enjoy my evening without worry about everything else on my list.

Continue reading »]]> My car is old, dinged up, scratched and has a bumper that’s almost falling off. And I may drive it for another 8 years. Or I may buy a new car tomorrow. Either way, I’m pretty happy.

Two years ago my transmission died and really left me in a lurch. I had to make a call to fix the transmission on an old car and risk having something else break in the near future or give up on it and buy a new car.  The problem was that I was not in a great financial position to buy a new car. That ended up being the motivating decision in fixing the transmission, fortunately it worked out for me, but I decided I didn’t want to be in that position the next time something went wrong.

I figured out how much it would have cost me to lease a car, which is the position I would have been forced into if my car had died, and it would have been (at the very least) about 10% of my take-home pay. Starting with my next paycheck, I took that 10% and put it into a car account. Over the next two years, it has grown to the point that I could not buy outright a decent used car. I also use that for maintenance costs on my current car.

This is something I recommend. It offers a lot of piece of mind and is relatively painless. When small maintenance issues do come up, I don’t worry because it feels like I’ve already paid for them. And when my car does finally die, I will have the funds ready to get a new one.

Continue reading »]]> I take my backpack very seriously and I take it everywhere. It started as an academic backpack, but I found myself taking it many places besides school. I started putting things I needed regularly in with my school supplies. By the time I finished college, it was such a habitual thing, I kept it around. The contents have been slowly changing over the last fifteen years. I evaluate what should be there based on both how likely I am to use it and how critical it will be if I need it. So I have a laptop mouse which I never need, but I use often and I have a small first aid kit, which I’ve never had to use, but I like knowing it’s there. Many things have been substituted out and replaced with lighter and more compact versions. Occasionally things are outright removed, but this rare.

The backpack itself is divided into six compartments. There are three small outer-compartments that are open, one small-ish zip-up compartment at the very back and two larger main compartments. One note I’d like to make here, I’ve included a lot of links to Amazon, I’m not trying to sell anything, but that’s the best way to show what tools I’ve chosen rather than describe them in detail here.

In the three small outter compartments I have:

• Laptop mouse (Microsoft Arc Mouse)
• Earbuds
• Laptop power cord
• Bottle with Excedrin and Benadril
• Small grooming kit
  • Nail clippers
  • Small titatium scissors
  • Tweezers

The excedrin and benaril hit the perfect mid-point between useful and emergency being used often and they are more than just a convienence. The scissors I keep with me are actually high end sewing scissors. The blades are only an inch long, slightly curved and razor sharp. Also, being titainium, they stay pretty sharp.

The zip compartment on the back contains:

• Sharpie permanant marker
• Multi-tip pen (red, blue, black and mechanical pencil)
• Small LED flashlight
• USB to Mini-USB cord
• USB Tablet cord
• USB Wall plug
• 16G SD Card
• 64G Flash Drive
• Leatherman Skeletool
• Folding scissors

The USB cord is for my phone and my Kindle, it lets me get at the files as well as charge them. I use my phone as my primary flash drive. The 64G flash drive has a full backup of my web site and all of my personal files, however those are regularly synced, and I would feel comfortable wiping the drive at any time.

The larger of the two main compartments contains:

• Portfolio
  • Pad of paper
  • Pen
  • 2 envelops with forever stamps already attached
• Netbook 
• Asus Transformer Tablet (with keyboard)

The Portfolio is a nice but thin one. It’s set-up specifically so that I can grab it and walk into a meeting and still look fairly professional but know that I have a few writing surfaces and a pen ready to go. The tablet is kind of a new toy and I mostly just use it to read kindle books. The netbook is small and light weight, but powerful enough for internet browsing or even light development. It’s the old-school touch screen where the screen spins around which I like better than a tablet.

The smaller compartment contains a hard plastic container that servers as a sort of tool kit. It contains:

• Masking tape
• Small plastic zip bag filled with tissue
• Thermal blanket
• Small first aid kit
  • Bandages
  • Medical tape
  • Alcohol swabs
  • Gause
• Head lamp
• Toothbrush
• Toothpase
• Floss
• Bits for the skeletool
• Compact jewlers screwdriver set
• Butane lighter
• Eraser
• Rubbing alcohol (in an eye drop container, about 1.5 oz)

One of the best things in here is the skeletool with the bit drivers. For many small projects, that is the only tool I need. Many people have asked about the head lamp. For anyone who’s ever been in a power outtage for more than hour, you know that holding a flashlight gets annoying really quickly. I’ve been stuck in a power outtage in a few un-expected places and I’ve found it makes more sense to just have this with me. For a long time I carried a normal flashlight, but when I needed it, I wished I had my head lamp. Plus, I love the reaction when the power does go out, everyones in the dark for a few seconds and then I have a flashlight on my head – that always get’s me major “preparedness” points.

For a while I was carrying a Swedish steel kit, but I got realistic – I’m probably not going to end up stranded anywhere long enough that I’m going to use up the fuel in a butane lighter. Until recently I had a Windmill Delta lighter. I don’t want to come down to hard on it because it was a good lighter, but it only lasted about six years. The first problem came up because the latch that holds the top closed can fold right into the flame. This wouldn’t be a big problem, but the the latch has a piece of plastic right on the end. So I melted that. About four years after I got it the plastic shell started to fall apart and I was just left with the inside lighter. Not a huge problem because it still worked fine, but somewhat dissapointing. Eventually the lighter developed a small crack and it wouldn’t hold butane anymore. The lighter I have now is only a few months old, so check back in a decade to see what I think. A final note, whatever lighter you choose, make sure it’s a pressurized butane lighter. Zippo style lighters are nice but fuel tends to evaporate over time. You can’t throw one in a backpack and expect it to still have fuel six months down the road.

I will try to post some updates to this soon. I’d like to get some detailed photos up and get a weight for the backpack.

Continue reading »]]> The board has two rows of six holes with a single large hole (Mancala) at each end. To start, each of the holes (except the Manacalas) have 4 stones.

Continue reading »]]> About a year ago, I read this article by Jeff Varasano and decided to embark on my own quest to make the best pizza I could. I don’t think my results were anything near the quality as what Mr. Varasano produced, but I think it’s a little more attainable and still quite tasty.

I should start by saying this pizza recipe fascinates me because it stands apart from all my other recipes. Most recipes are basically combinatorial – put the right things together and get them sufficiently warm. A few move into the realm of being chemical or biological (using bacteria or a chemical leavener to add fluffiness). This recipe is very mechanical. Having the right ingredients and getting the yeast to activate is not enough to make a great pizza. How the dough is physically handled makes a huge difference.

The recipe is simple:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 package (2.5 tsp) yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• flour
• olive oil
• corn meal
• mozzarella cheese
• pizza sauce
• smoked swiss
• basil

Start by putting 1 cup of warm water in a mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast on top (if you just dump it all it, it clumps together and does not activate as well). Then sprinkle the sugar and salt in as well. Let that stand for 5 minutes. Use that 5 minutes to preheat the oven to the lowest setting (as soon as it beeps to say that it’s pre-heated, turn it off, we just need a warm oven for the dough to rise). Also during this 5 minutes, put the mozzarella cheese in a wire mesh strainer and rinse it under cold water. I found that most mozzarella cheese that I buy in the store has a fine layer powder that prevents it from completely melting, washing this in cold water will remedy that.

After the five minutes is done, we’re going to add flour and knead the dough. Notice that I did not put a quantity on the flour; I have no idea how much flour goes into a pizza, I only know the correct texture. Start by putting in a cup of flour and start kneading. I use a Kitchen Aid with a dough hook, I’m sure it can be done by hand, but it’s going to take a long time. On my mixer, it takes about 20 minutes to knead the dough. Slowly add flour a 1/4 cup at a time. The goal here is to keep the dough as wet as possible and have it be just workable in the end. The dough will get very stretchy near the end. Another sign that the dough has reach the right consistency is that when I add the last 1/4 cup of flour, the dough will briefly form a ball, then mix back down and not quite ball up. There is no good way to describe the dough, but this is the crucial step. I think you simply have to accept that you’ll make a few pizza’s where you add too much flour, then you’ll make one pizza where you don’t add enough and then you’ll have the hang of it. So don’t plan on your first few pizzas being great.

When the kneading is done I throw a few table spoons of flour on top and work it underneath the dough using a spatula. This way I have a nice ball of dough that is well floured on the outside but still very wet at the center. If I try to pick this up with my hands, I can’t, the dough would ooze through my fingers. Cover the bowl with a cloth and stick it in the oven which should still be warm (remember, we pre-heated and turned off the oven on the lowest setting, so it should not be on right now). Wait one hour for the dough to rise.

After 1 hour, take the dough out of the oven and turn the oven to it’s highest setting (550F in my case) Also move one of the racks to the lowest setting. Get out a cookie tray, and put about a teaspoon of olive oil (I don’t measure this, just eyeball it) on it and rub it around to coat the pan (just use your hands and wash them before and after). Then sprinkle some cornmeal on the tray. The combination of the oil and cornmeal will keep the dough from sticking to the pan and it gives it a nice texture. This next part is tricky, we’ve just got all that air into the dough while it was rising, every time we touch it now, we’re damaging that; so the challenge is to get the dough in the right shape on the tray touching and moving it as little as possible. Pour the dough out onto the tray (it should ooze out of the bowl) and dust with a little flour (just enough that it won’t stick to your hands). You now want to go around the edges and pull the dough into the correct shape, it should be very stretchy and easy to shape. Don’t spread it, that will push the cornmeal around, grab the dough (gently) and lift it (gently) then pull (gently) placing it down in the right place. After a few tries you should be able to completely shape the pizza dough in less than a dozen motions.

After the oven is preheated, put the tray with just the dough on the lowest rack for 3 minutes. A ‘real’ pizza is cooked at 800F in a wood burning stone oven. This conducts a lot of heat to the dough quickly. Unless you build your own or hack your oven, this probably isn’t available to you so by putting just the dough in for 3 minutes, we can get the crust a little crisper with out burning the cheese. After 3 minutes pull out the dough, cover it it sauce. spread the mozzarella cheese around and grate a little bit of smoked swiss over the top (this makes a big difference but you only need a little, one block of smoked swiss is easily enough for a dozen pizzas). Sprinkle some basil on top. You can put toppings on the pizza if you like, but I swear it doesn’t need any.

Put the now topped pizza back in the oven still on the lowest rack. It’s only going to take a few minutes, but cook it until the cheese gets a little bubbly. Take it out, let it cool for a few minutes and eat!

Continue reading »]]> There exists an important distinction between correlation and causality. Starting early in 2010 through this writing (March 2011) I was looking to separate which of my behaviors caused me to be in an optimal physical and mental state (henceforth OPM) and which behaviors simply correlated with it.

An example of correlation is going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day. I can only do this after I’ve reached a state of OPM and I generally stop right around the time I leave that state. While it does make me feel great, if I’m not already at OPM and I want to be (I always want to be) setting this as a goal is not likely to accomplish anything.

I have found many things that simply correlate with OPM. But after a year of looking, I have found 10 rules that help cause that desired state. They are not yet perfect, and I hope to release an update to them, but, well – see rule #4.

I’ve written an explanation for each rule to help explain why I chose it and why I think it is causal. Some of the rules are actions to be taken often (ideally daily). Others are techniques for creating a state of OPM and protecting it from things like procrastination, lack of focus and being tired.

1.     Exercise
2.     Take a nap
3.     Eat something healthy and drink water every two hours you’re awake
4.     Good sooner is better than perfect later – the first does not preclude the second
5.     Big or persistent problems should be broken into smaller problems
6.     Any thing you want to remember should be written down
7.     To learn a thing – do it. To master a thing – do it for many years
8.     You have no will-power. Bribe, incentivize and trick yourself
9.     Take your hobbies seriously
10.     Balance is more important than any individual success or failure

Exercise
I have come to realize that my mind and body are not separate, and how I treat one effects the other. For me, exercise is the key to keeping my mind functioning at the level I desire. Within two days of cutting exercise out of my routine, I am sleeping more (at least in bed more, often getting less real sleep), my thinking is fuzzy and I am less ambitious. Twenty minutes invested in exercise pays back dividends. This also tends to serve as the canary in the coal mine for me. If I’m not making time for it or don’t feel like doing it, I’m probably off track somewhere. In those cases I cut back on exercise so that I don’t end up cutting it out completely.

Take a nap
Twenty to thirty minutes sleep somewhere in the middle of the day is really good for you. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel and it will increase your productivity to the point of more than making up for the lost time. I do this as soon as I get home from work and it serves as a great barrier between work and home. Napping is also great practice at falling asleep and waking up. When I’m napping regularly, I build up the habit of falling asleep quickly and getting up promptly and it carries over to my nocturnal sleep. When I’m not napping, my habits shift towards falling asleep slowing hitting the snooze button.

Eat something healthy and drink water every two hours you’re awake
It generally takes about 30 minutes for your mind to register that your stomach is full. This means that if you get hungry, you’re likely to start eating anything you can get your hands on and continuing eating for 30 minutes longer than you should. And in our society, the most abundant and endless food sources are almost entirely bad for you. The best defense against this to keep yourself from ever reaching a state of being really hungry. To do this, eat something every two hours and drink some water. But if you’re going to do this, you might as well make it healthy.
An important note, this isn’t “Eat the healthiest thing you can think of even if you don’t like it”. Find some fruits or vegetables you like (apples are my favorite) and eat those.

Good sooner is better than perfect later. The first does not preclude the second.
This seems so obvious, but often we put something off until we have time to perfect and it never gets done. Counter this by committing to reaching a low bar soon and a high bar later. This has become the rule in the consumer product and software development; get a beta out quickly so you can get feedback and establish a product early. It works just as well on small, personal goals. Approaching any problem with goal of making a dent in it rather than finishing it will make you more optimistic and likely to walk away feeling you met your goal – further increasing the odds that you’ll come back the task in the future. And more often than you’d expect, one dent is enough to finish a daunting task.

Big or persistent problems should be broken into smaller problems
Virtually any problem can be broken down into a bunch of stupid simple pieces. This is particularly useful against procrastination. Try this, find something you’ve been procrastinating about and break it down into as many little steps as you possibly can and try to do just the first step today. This technique makes tasks less daunting, less difficult, easier to plan and you’ll have a much better idea how long they’ll take.

Any thing you want to remember should be written down
Your memory sucks. If it’s something you want to do or remember, write it down. You need to keep and organize it too, but writing it down is the first step. I recommend finding a good online space to keep everything. It’s easy to organize and you’ll have access almost anywhere. This goes for things you need to do, things you’ve done, notes, references – everything. I have to keep a list of piano pieces I have memorized, that’s ironic. These are entire pieces I can play from memory, yet I cannot remember that I know them.
I recommend extending this to keeping a journal (I recommend Moon-Jumper). I do this and it’s comes in useful in the most unusual ways. I find that my memory tends to change over time and being able to look back and see things exactly as they happened is often helpful. For instance, I had a membership at a gym and I though I was going about 3-5 times a month (probably not enough to justify continuing my membership right there), but when I pulled up my records, I was able to show that actually I was averaging 1-2 times a month.

To learn a thing – do it. To master a thing – do it for many years
Everything I do well now, I once did very poorly. The only way I reach the level of expertise I have is through practice. I have no natural talent, no ‘gifts’, only years of work. The upside to this, is that I believe I can master anything, if I’m willing to put in the time. Further, because I have only one lifetime, I accept that I can only master a few things at a time and I have become very discerning in what I choose to take on.
There are two important things to take away here. The first is that if you want to learn something, find a way to get hands on experience as quickly as possible. The second part is don’t be surprised if you fail the first few times. Keep trying and track your improvements.

You have no will-power. Bribe, incentivize and trick yourself
The research on this is amazing. Being tired, distracted or stressed will all take a significant chunk out of your will-power. Therefore, it cannot be relied upon. If you are counting on will-power to reach your goals, you will probably fail. A better route, is to bribe and trick yourself. If you say “I’m going to exercise every day” you won’t. If you say, “I don’t have to exercise, but that’s the only time I’m allowed to watch [favorite TV show]” you’ll find it much easier to stick to. Further, tell yourself that you don’t have to exercise, but you have to put on your workout clothes and go the gym or sit on a bike or stand on a treadmill. This works particularly well with #5. Give yourself some reward for breaking a task down, and create an incentive to break it down into as many pieces as possible. Then set a reward for each piece.

Take your hobbies seriously
Danial Pink has a great series of talks about how autonomy, mastery and purpose are psychological rewards that add drive to our lives. In the case of hobbies, autonomy is inherently already attained, make sure you reach for mastery and purpose. I don’t care if your hobby is a fine art or watching TV, find a way to master it and take pride in that skill set. To tie this back to the core, everything in my life takes on more purpose when I take my hobbies seriously and try to perfect what ever I choose to do. Because I have this purpose, I try to excel in everything I do and I try not to waste my own time.

Balance is more important than any individual success or failure
Of all the heuristics I live my life by, this is the meta-heuristic. If it comes down to exercise or spending time with friends, I will often forgo exercise for one day, even though its one of my foundations. A lack of flexibility would leave me without friends.

Continue reading »]]> This week I undertook the project of canning soup. The process started with a little research, mostly to see if it could be done safely. The consensus seemed to be that canning soup was safe as long as no grains or thickening agents were added (rice, noodles, flour – I also avoided barley and quinoa to be safe) and that the soup needed to be processed in a pressure cooker at 11psi for 60 minutes (for pints).

The next step was to find a recipe. I ran into a little trouble here, I couldn’t find anything that was quite what I was looking for. So I decided to wing it – I recommend this, I had a lot of fun and produced a soup that was exactly what I wanted in terms of taste, price and health. I went through the produce section at my grocery store and picked up anything I wanted in a soup – rutabaga, potatoes, onions, carrots, celery. The base of he soup ended up being a combination of veggie broth, tomato and lentils. I probably spent a total of 30 minutes cleaning, peeling and cutting vegetables and ended up with about two and a half gallons of soup.

I added vegetables based on their hardness and how I wanted them to cook down. Lentils, rutabaga and potatoes went in first, carrots a little while later, when that was getting soft, everything else went in. Once the soup was nearing the right consistency, I started taking out small bowls (just a few table spoons) and adding different seasonings to each bowl. My wife and I went through and tried the various combinations, then mixed up a few more batches based on what we liked and where we thought we could make it better. We decided on curry, sriracha and a little honey. We added those to the big pot until it tasted right and let it cook for another hour.

When the soup was done, I canned it in pint size jars (a good size lunch) and processed them in the pressure cooker. The one big mistake I made was doing this after work. It doesn’t require a lot of attention, but it takes a long time. The soup took over three hours and each batch of cans (I ended up having three) took about an hour and half (one hour to process, plus time at either end to build up pressure and release it safely). I didn’t finish until two in the morning. Next time, I’ll make it a weekend project and probably double the quantity.

The numbers are where this project gets really impressive. I ended up making 17 cans (I would have probably made more than 20, but I ran out of cans). Per can, the soup cost $0.60 and took about 5 minutes of my time. It has at least an order of magnitude less sodium that any soup you’ll find in a can in a store. All the ingredients were high quality and healthy. And because they’re canned, I can bring them to work in bulk, leave them in a desk drawer and take them out as I need them.

If you’re interested in doing something like this, the following are my recommendations. If you are not familiar with canning, do your research. It’s not hard, but you have to follow the rules or you can make yourself very sick. Make up your own soup (but only use safe ingredients). Make the soup first, then season it, and try a bunch of little samples to make sure it’s exactly what you want. It’s a lot of fun and you’ll enjoy eating it. Leave yourself lots of time.

Continue reading »]]> Often language falls short of its goal of allowing us to communicate a concept. When this happens we create new words to address the situation. I have three concepts that I would like the word-smiths to address.

One
A process that was implimented for one reason but kept for many other (it may or may not have met it’s original purpose). I imagine many professions have procedures that fit this. In programming I have two things that fit this description, code reviews and pair programming. I’m not clear what the goal of a code review is, I’ve been in many conversations about this but code reviews do so many great things that no one I’ve found is sure which one is most important. Code reviews catch bugs, they pass knowledge, they make sure the code is readable, they provide a sanity check to how a problem was fixed, they provide the satisfaction that some one is looking at my code. The list goes on from there. Same thing with pairing – many reasons, but no single one is the justification for pair programming. I want a word to describe a process with so many good aspects we’re not exactly sure which one is most important.

Two
An elegant tool that is highly multi-functional in the hands of a master and whose power is often over-looked by novices. The command terminal is littered with examples; sed, grep, akw – even the pipe operator. In the graphic data and shader world matrix transformations have this type of power. You may be tempted to suggest a swiss army knife as a tangible example, but that isn’t quite right. A swiss army knife is a compact collection of individual tools. I think a screwdriver is a great example. Beyond turning screws I’ve used a screw driver or seen a screw used to pry, chisle, scrape, probe – I’ve seen the handle used to drive small nails, I’ve seen it used to short a circuit. I even used one to open a bottle of wine once (actually, I just pushed the cork in, but it did the job well). I want a word for these understated super-tools.

Three
A scenario where you are incapable of preventing something from happening despite knowing how it can be stopped, wanting it to be stopped and knowing you will be effected by results of the event happening. One example, (I used to do this to my parents all the time) you ask your child to clean their room, say they’re in trouble if they don’t. You beg and plead and explain that if they just spend 10 minutes putting things away they can play video games, watch TV, play outside, what ever they want, for the rest of the day. If they don’t clean their room, they will be grounded and none of these fun things will happen. But of course the pleading falls on deaf ears – they go to their room, play for a while, the mess gets worse then they go to watch TV. You explain that they are grounded, everything happens exactly as you said but you were powerless to stop it.

Continue reading »]]> I recently purchased an Eee Tablet from Woot. It came pre-installed with Windows 7 but I wanted to install Ubuntu to see how that would work. Much to my surprise, after a few days of tinkering I had a system that worked really as tablet. Below are my instructions for replicating what I did, you can probably do the whole thing in under 2 hours. These instructions are target at Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10, while they will probably work with other versions of each, be aware of any differences that may arise.

1. Pre-setup
2. Install Ubuntu
3. Resolution and Touch-screen
4. Configure Firefox
5. UI
6. Extras

1) Pre-Setup

There is a large matrix of option in regard to how your system will be organized. You can dual-boot or just run Ubuntu. You can partition the internal SSD or add SD card. There are decisions regarding how much space is available and these decisions will be affected by which model you have (if you have 160G, dual-booting from a single drive is easy, if you’ve got 16G, space is going to be a little tight). I chose to dual boot from the internal SSD. I have a 32G drive. I gave Windows 20G and Ubuntu 10G (roughly). This setup actually leaves Windows feeling a little cramped (mine takes up 16G) and Ubuntu feels quite spacious (mine is less that 4G).

If you are going to dual-boot and space is limited, I recommend starting by uninstalling everything you don’t need from Windows. Also, install anything you feel you will need (a good browser, maybe a text-editor) so that you can get an idea of what the final size is going to be for your Windows partition. Once you have that number, set up your partitions. In Windows, open the Control Panel and search for “partition”, that will open Disk Management. Shrink your C: drive down to the size you have chosen (make sure you leave at least a few gigs free or Windows gets cranky).

2) Install Ubuntu

You’re going to need a USB drive with at least 4G. Download a copy of Ubuntu Netbook edition and follow the instructions for creating a bootable USB drive. Plug the drive into your Eee and boot it up, as the machine is booting hit F2 to get into the BIOS. In the BIOS goto the Boot tab and select “Hard Disk Drives” and change your 1st Drive to the bootable USB key, hit F10 to save and exit.

When the drive boots, select Install Now and follow the instructions to install Ubuntu. If you’re dual-booting, make sure you install to the correct partition, also the mount point needs to be “/”.

After you’ve installed, go back into the BIOS and change the hard-drive back and boot into Ubuntu. Install any updates.

3) Resolution, Touch-screen and Keyboard

I read that some people had the correct resolution and touch-screen capability out of the box. I did not have the correct resolution or touch-screen and had to set them up manually.

To fix the screen-resolution I used the instructions here the cliff notes version is open a terminal and enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update
and then
sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config
Reboot and you should have the correct resolution.

To get the touch-screen working I found this discussion. You don’t need to read or do most of it though, just download the multitouch-kernal-source-maveric at the bottom of the first post, or I put a copy here. Just save it to your desktop, extract it and run it. Reboot and you should have a working touch screen.

At this point, you’re going to want an onscreen keyboard. Just open up the Ubuntu Software Center and search for onBoard. You may need to enable some of the Universal Access features to make this work.

4) Configure Firefox

I’m assuming one of the main things you will be doing with a tablet is reading stuff on the Internet. To make this experience pleasant, we’re going to customize Firefox a bit. First, open up Add-Ons and get the “Grab and Drag” add on. This will let you use the touch screen to move the page around. After that’s install reboot Firefox. We’re going to want to use fullscreen mode fairly often because of the small screen. Right click on the navigation bar and select Customize… drag the “Fullscreen” item up into the navigation bar. At this point I also removed the Home, Relad and Stop buttons because I almost never use them and I hid the bookmarks toolbar, but you should customize it however you like. The last thing we need to do is change the default settings because Firefox will hide the navigation bar when we’re in fullscreen mode, and you’ll have to open up the keyboard to get out of fullscreen mode. To fix this, type “about:config” in the URL bar and set “browser.fullscreen.autohide” to false. Now Firefox should be tablet friendly.

5) UI

The last piece is a few tweaks I made to the Ubuntu UI. Here is a screenshot of my desktop to show you what I’m going for. I wanted to maximize vertical screen real-estate. Add a panel to the right (right click on the top or bottom panels and select New Panel) and then remove the panels from the top and bottom. Right click the right panel and select properties. Set the width to 80 pixels and choose a background (here is a copy of the one I’m using). Right click the right panel again and select Add to Panel. Add the following things: Clock, Main Menu (not Menu Bar), Notification Area, Shut Down, Trash and Window Selector (not Window Picker). Also, drag a link to Firefox and onBoard into the panel. Lastly, change the Appearance (Menu>System>Preferences>Appearance), I recommend something with big min, max and close buttons. I chose “Quiet Environment” online. Note that changing the appearance will also change the look of your panel, in my case much for the better (sever icons were using the default, horizontal background which looked bad on a vertical panel).

Note: if you want to use the default theme, or you are having issues with odd background rendering on some applets, there is a documented fix.

Closing Statements

This is a first draft I may have made some mistakes or left something out. If you tried to follow these instructions and ran into any trouble please let me know and I will update them. I didn’t follow this linear a path, I made a lot of mistakes and tried a lot of options, these are the ones that worked best for me. Please, if you have any feedback, leave it in the comments below – I would love to hear from you..

UPDATE: I tried to update Ubuntu and something crashed and I didn’t have GUI, just terminal. I looked around for a little while to try to figure out how to fix it, but I decided it would be easier to re-install. I was able to follow these instructions and get everything working in about an hour.

I will also make a note here that I upgraded the RAM on mine as well as got a 16G flash drive and plugged it into the left side where I intend to leave it. That flash drive is being used purely for storage, that way both Windows and Ubuntu can have access to it.

Unsolved Problems:

• I only have single touch, not the double touch that the hardware supports
• I would like the front button to switch the screen orientation UPDATE: I still don’t have this working, but I was able to see that there are triggers fired when the button is pressed, held and released. Also, the same type of triggers fire when the screen is flipped into “tablet” mode. I would be interested in taking advantage of this to have some features behave differently depending on what mode the computer is in.

Extra 1: Kindle

I used to have a different set of instructions for this, but these are easier and work better.

1. Download the Kindle for PC software
2. Add ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa to the Ubuntu software sources and install the latest version of Wine (as of this writing it was 1.3)
3. Set the execute permisions on the Kindle installer
4. Right click and run the installer with Wine

Extra 2: Cellwriter

I just installed Cellwriter and I have to endorse it. Works great!

Extra 3: BlueProximity

This was easy to set up and is available in the Ubuntu Software center. It will detect the bluetooth signal from your phone and use that to lock and unlock the computer. UPDATE: this was really cool, but it got annoying and I removed it. I found that some desks actually blocked the signal, so I would be working and the machine would randomly lock for a second. Still, a very cool idea.