Via Keith at Invisible Library, a video that Jessamyn at Librarian.net made while installing Ubuntu Linux on some computers donated to her library.

She has a pretty good description of the process and you get to look over her shoulder as she does it.

She’s at a small library and these are donated computers. If they had to buy the Windows software, it would cost them a mint. I have worked with donated computers and they usually need to be completely re-built on the software side, and no one remembers to include the software with the machines. You have to be fairly large for Microsoft to recognize you for special rates, so you end up with a situation that it would be cheaper to buy a new computer with the software on it, than to buy the software alone for a donated computer.

Guy of Rook’s Rant is celebrating his fourth blogiversary™.

Go congratulate or harass him as is your wont.

CNN reports that Wildfire smoke closes interstates in Florida. The Florida Highway Patrol has shut down Interstates 10 and 75 around Lake City, Florida because of a combination of smoke and fog.

The fires are in the Okefenokee Swamp, the large mass of green North of I-10 and West of Folkston, Georgia [the dotted line is the Florida-Georgia border]. You will notice there are no roads and not enough water for boats, so access to the fires is a hard slog through the mud. The special vehicles that were used for getting through the area are currently in a desert.

Without sustained rain, these fires are near impossible to extinguish, as this is what coal looks like before it dried and was compressed.

The Okefenokee was the setting for the world’s best political comic strip: Walt Kelly’s strip featuring Pogo Possum. Walt died more than 30 years ago, but his creation is still relevant. I think the neocons would certainly have caused Walt to resurrect the Jack Acid Society in their dishonor.

They learned a new trick today – if you step in just the right place on the big black box that says UPS, things get very silent as all of the equipment shuts down, and then very noisy when someone comes back to see why things are silent.