writer's blocked

I’m currently struggling through “the forced march”… but I’m pretty blocked.

It’s not un-true to say that I’m disappointed with quickie “interesting thing I saw on the internet today” posts, and I missed yesterday because I don’t have the energy to do a long-form entry.

Twitter really is a “short form blogging platform” for me.

Things I’m thinking about writing something on, but haven’t had the time to write up properly:

SmartOS stuff:

• how to lay down “the stock SmartOS filesystem” on a ZFS zpool that you made by hand (instead of letting the installer pick how, and which, disks are assembled into a volume)

• networking tricks that are really handy for your SmartOS lab (NAT for those without very many IP’s, tunnelling to your VNC ports, using an IPv6 tunnelbroker)

• starting a FAQ answers page, based on the last several months’ of IRC logs from here

• rolling a “SmartOS for newbs” usb release that, at “install time” spins up an example zone, and drops “root” logins into that zone, making the default environment something that’s persistently writable, has a full suite of installable packages, and is appropriate to add additional non-root users. “Escalating privileges” to the global zone would be either ssh to another IP address, or some other thing. Basically, make a SmartOS install that makes some (apparently) non-obvious decisions for the first-timer, so they can’t regret their wrong assumptions and get frustrated right out of the gate.

Other stuff:

• the value of an honest mechanic, and where I’ve found mine

• more World Baseball Classic stuff

• my workflow for getting tv shows and other content from the internet onto my flatscreen in a few minutes or less

• options for me watching live broadcast television from NYC, and options for me “sharing” my cable feed’s rich channel lineup with underprivileged MediaCom cable customers in the midwest.

• potpourri