• WakeMate – $50 and you might sleep better. It tracks your sleep patterns and wakes you between REM periods. It seems most useful for heavy sleepers, like me. My wife sleeps very lightly and wakes up often. I don’t think she’d need additional jarring.
• Samsung’s Galaxy S phones – good Android phones on every carrier… including AT&T. This may be the first real competitor to the iPhone for those locked into AT&T. The only downside is that AT&T doesn’t let you sideload applications, i.e. install them manually.
• Floppy drives with legs.

Things not exciting me:

• eBook readers – they’re just not there yet. The Kindle (or DX) and Nook are getting there, but they’re just not what I want. I read technical books, so I need a large screen. I don’t care about color, and I don’t want a touchscreen because it lowers the clarity of the screen. I don’t particularly care about the 3G access – I can download books at home, and I’d rather use my phone for mobile internet access. I want simple, cheap, clear, and free.
• Loss of freedom – particularly with regard to the internet. AT&T has already switched to limited data plans, Verizon probably will soon, and broadband providers have been considering the switch for a while. It makes me sick that this is possible when internet access should be a human right. I know for a fact that capacity far exceeds demand at some of these companies, so it’s dishonest.
• 3D – ugh. Movies and TV are equally bad ideas. Give me back my Virtual Boy.

echo USB0 > /proc/acpi/wakeup

You can add that line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local (on Fedora, similar elsewhere) to make sure the setting is enabled on startup.

I was growing a bit tired of the development lag in Crunchbang Linux and needed a new distribution. I want a well-built system that doesn’t take too much administration so I can focus on other things. (As you may know, I have a tendency to set up and administer machines for fun, forgetting to do any “real” work on top of it.)

Fedora sounded good. All free software with fairly frequent updates. RPM hell is avoided with Yum. I particularly appreciate the use of the free Nouveau driver for my Nvidia card, and Kernel Mode Setting for a smoother start and fewer hassles.

When it works, Fedora is slick. They’re a bit ahead of Ubuntu in terms of features, with default SELinux, KMS, and better video drivers. Another thing I appreciate is that one of Fedora’s goals is to stay close to upstream. They don’t want to apply 10 patches to every package, preferring to send patches upstream and get down to zero distribution-specific patches if possible.

It’s quick to boot, particularly with KMS. The battery life is about 10-15% longer than with Crunchbang, even with more daemons running.

However, I ran into a couple related bugs that hurt the experience. First, since I migrated my /home partition from a prior system without SELinux, I got a lot of SELinux warnings about my file labels. It told me to use restorecon, but that didn’t fix everything. The solution was to run “sudo touch /.autorelabel” which tells SELinux to relabel the entire system at the next boot.

This was complicated by the fact that HAL couldn’t start due to the SELinux failures. In today’s world of Xorg 1.4+, HAL detects and configures all of your input devices by default.

Without HAL, you have no keyboard or mouse to use in order to fix SELinux labeling. The solution is to log into single-user mode and fix it there. To get into single-user mode in Fedora, turn on your computer and hold Shift after the POST, before you see the Fedora startup screen. This will give you a Grub console. Hit “a” to append to the kernel line, adding a space and a “3″ to the end, then hit enter. (“3″ technically gives you multi-user mode with networking, but the point is that it doesn’t start X.) From there, you can create the autorelabel file or whatever else you need to do.

Note: If you just want X to start without worrying about SELinux, or if you have another problem related to HAL input devices, there’s another option. You can tell X to start even without detecting any devices from HAL. This makes it use the default keyboard and mouse types. Just create an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with the following contents:

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"
EndSection

Summary: I’m going to stick with Fedora for a while because I trust a distribution that likes staying close to upstream.

Why did I start? Out of respect for its creators, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. They helped create and popularize Unix, C, UTF-8, Plan 9, and many other things. It may seem like they’ve been under the radar lately in their research wing at Google, but I think they’ve just been building up a foundation of code and ideas.

Why is it exciting? It seems to have solutions for concurrency, compilation speed, and safety, while still looking somewhat familiar. You can run hundreds of thousands of concurrent goroutines. The entire Go library compiles in ~5 seconds. Go code runs almost as fast as C, without even being optimized yet. It’s type-safe without being too verbose.

It’s not as high level as Ruby or Python, but it can be more mentally satisfying in an OCD geek kind of way. It’s C without the pain.

Sure, it took ideas from Alef, Limbo, Newsqueak, and other languages (watch this then this for proof, and for enlightenment) – but how else can you make progress? Go has the momentum those languages never got.

And I, for one, am glad that the legacy of Bell Labs lives on.

Here’s a code sample that I think particularly illustrates the elegance of the language, taken from the Go tutorial. Whether you come from an imperative or declarative background, I think it should be impressive.

This generates prime numbers with the standard sieve of Eratosthenes, but it does it by creating a steam of integers and piping together filters for each prime to exclude multiples. It’s all run concurrently and uses synchronous channels for communication. And it’s fast.

func generate() chan int {
  ch := make(chan int)
  go func(){
    for i := 2; ; i++ {
      ch <- i
    }
  }()
  return ch
}


func filter(in chan int, prime int) chan int {
  out := make(chan int)
  go func() {
    for {
      if i := <-in; i % prime != 0 {
        out <- i
      }
    }
  }()
  return out
}


func sieve() chan int {
  out := make(chan int)
  go func() {
    ch := generate()
    for {
      prime := <-ch
      out <- prime
      ch = filter(ch, prime)
    }
  }()
  return out
}


func main() {
  primes := sieve()
  for {
    fmt.Println(<-primes)
  }
}

If you find Go interesting, you can get involved by writing some open-source libraries. The standard library has a lot to go on, and cat-v has a list of resources to check out.

• Adrenalyn Stack – Berry Energizing: 7/10

  First you get a strong blast of berry flavor, but unfortunately it doesn’t last very long. It fades to a general fruity flavor, similar to the Subzero Red, but has a slightly chalkier texture. I didn’t get an aftertaste, though, so it’s not bad overall.

• Ripped Force – Fruit Punch: 8/10

  This is a good option if you want a strong energy boost. The Ripped Force drinks have 200mg of caffeine along with some blend called Adrenergic Catalyst Technology. I have no idea what that means, but it gives me a bit of the jitters. The Fruit Punch variety is an interesting beast – it has a nice (though very sweet) fruity flavor at first, and then completely disappears, as if you didn’t have a drink at all. Then, there’s a bit of chalky texture, but no real aftertaste. I haven’t had that experience before, but it’s not too bad – a little better than the Berry Energizing flavor.

• Speed Stack – Lemon Lime: 9/10

  I love the flavor on this one. That means something because I normally hate lemon-lime flavors. In this one, the citrus is toned down and it’s fairly sweet – not overly bright. The energy level is fairly strong, as in other Speed Stacks, but not as strong as a Ripped Force. There’s a bit of aftertaste, but not of chemicals, just a slightly sweet flavor.

• Diet Turbo Tea – Peach Tea: n/a

  I don’t like peaches, so I’m not going to give this one a number rating to be fair to people who like peaches. (It would have been a 7.) In essence, this tastes like the lemon Turbo Tea with a bit of peach flavor. Pretty simple. Neither the lemon nor the peach flavors are too strong. You get a faint teabag-like taste, some lemon or peach, and a strong sweetness. If you like sweet tea, you’ll like these.

• Speed Stack – Fruit Punch: 9/10

  This is better than the Ripped Force Fruit Punch – the type of additive really makes a difference in taste. The flavor is more consistent and there’s no chalky aftertaste at all. It has a very slight aftertaste, but just of fruit – similar to the Lemon Lime speed stack but a little deeper. It’s a good balance of fruit and sweet, even though it has no sugar.

• Adrenalyn Stack – Fruit Punch: 6/10

  Tastes a little chalky and bitter compared to the Fruit Punch flavor of Speed Stack or even Ripped Force. The energy boost is really strong, but I’d rather have one of the better-tasting alternatives.

• Diet Turbo Tea – Green Tea: 7/10

  Fairly smooth, like the other Turbo Tea flavors, but the green tea flavor isn’t as good as the lemon. It’s still sweet, but drier and slightly bitter. I wouldn’t have guessed it was green tea if it weren’t on the label, to be honest. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it just doesn’t stand out like the lemon flavor.

• Speed Stack – Grape: 8/10

  This is better than the Ripped Force grape because it’s not as jittery and a bit smoother. Other than that, it’s similar – very sweet, slightly artificial, but if you like grape drinks you’ll probably like this. I happen to like grape, but the flavor could be a bit more mellow.

• Diet Turbo Tea – Raspberry Tea: 9/10

  Another great drink in the Turbo Tea line. It’s very different than the other ABB drinks, though – more like a flavored water than an energy drink. The raspberry flavor itself is great. It’s not even as sweet as the other Turbo Teas. Slightly sweet aftertaste, no chemical flavor, and no chalkiness. One of the better drinks in the line.

• Adrenalyn Stack – Berry Blast: 5/10

  I expected this to be similar to the Berry Energizing flavor of Adrenalyn Stack, but unfortunately it’s a couple steps down. It’s a little chalkier, a little more bitter, and tastes less like berries – almost metallic. I’ve certainly had worse – see my previous energy drinks reviews – but this is the worst from ABB.

Suggestions for ABB: More complex flavors. Packaging that works outside of the gym. They could justify the price if it came across as a high-end energy drink rather than only being for bodybuilders. I love Hugs, but not everyone does.

Free Bonus Review!

• essn Energy: Pomegranate Limeflower – 8/10

  This is another tea-based energy drink, like some of the others I’ve reviewed, but they managed to subdue the green tea / yerba mate flavor with a slightly fruity back-end of pomegranate. The limeflower, which I had never heard of, isn’t very noticeable. It just classes up the tea a bit. The energy boost from this is not strong at all, even though it has 240mg of guarana and a bunch of B vitamins. It only uses evaporated cane juice for sweetness so it falls handily into the “natural” category. This one’s worth a shot, particularly if you like tea, and I can recommend it over most other green tea-based energy products.

Note that free products are great, but they don’t affect the ratings. ABB did well overall, and there are a couple great drinks, but there were still a couple let-downs. I’ll have some suggestions for ABB at the end.

I tried five types of drinks:

• Speed Stack – No sugar, 250mg caffeine total.

  A couple ingredients you can pronounce, a few you can’t. This gives a moderately strong energy boost, and doesn’t seem to affect the flavor much.

• Ripped Force – 350mg of their Adrenergic Catalyst mix, i.e. a bunch of things you can’t pronounce.

  This gives a strong energy boost, but affects the flavor slightly more than Speed Stack. Some of these still got very good scores.

• Diet Turbo Tea – No sugar, 90mg of caffeine and guarana, plus some ginseng.

  A nice light energy boost. Doesn’t affect the flavor.

• Adrenalyn Stack – 200mg caffeine and a whole pile of things you can’t pronounce.

  The most additives, the strongest energy boost. Unfortunately, it really affects the texture and flavor of the drinks. These got some of the lower scores.

• Speed Shot Intensity – No sugar, but a lot of things you can’t pronounce.

  One of the more potent energy mixes. It doesn’t affect flavor consistently – sometimes it’s not noticeable, sometimes it is. See the individual reviews below.

There are a number of flavors for each of the above types. Originally, I was going to review the types and the flavors separately, but they affect each other more than I expected.

So, you get 15 reviews for the price of one!

• Speed Shot Intensity – Subzero Red: 8/10

  This reminds me of a red Hug (the little barrel-drinks) but not as overpoweringly sweet. It’s sugar-free, so I’m not sure how they managed this without getting a chemical aftertaste. The energy boost was noticeable but it didn’t keep me up all night – just what I wanted. I can’t pretend I know what all of the energy supplements in this drink are, but they work well.

• Diet Turbo Tea – Lemon: 9/10

  Tasty, natural tea with added guarana for energy. There’s only 90mg of caffeine total, so if your only goal is energy, try one of the stronger alternatives. The lemon flavor is balanced correctly for my taste. There’s a bit of tang from something – either the ginseng or the sucralose, I think. No chemical aftertaste. The tea flavor could be a bit more pronounced, but overall it’s quite tasty.

• Speed Stack – Lemon Tea: 8/10

  The flavor base is the same as the Turbo Tea, but this one has a much more potent energy mix. It masks the tea flavor slightly, but it still doesn’t taste like chemicals. There’s a slight sticky, sweet aftertaste. I’m impressed that they’re able to make these drinks powerful without the strong overtones of common energy drinks.

• Ripped Force – Grape: 7/10

  Similar to the Subzero Red, this flavor reminds me of a Hug. If you remember Hugs from when you were a kid, you can imagine these drinks. Sweet, slightly artificial fruity flavor. Not quite as sweet as a true Hug, which is a good thing. The energy boost is similar to the Speed Shot and Speed Stack, but a bit stronger. I’m a little jittery.

• Speed Shot Intensity – Purple Frost: 6/10

  Tastes like the Grape flavor of Ripped Force, but you can taste the added chemicals in this concentrated form. It’s not too strong, but since it’s noticeable, it detracts a little bit. The energy boost is on the strong side.

Stay tuned for part 5, the conclusion of the ABB reviews!