I Suck At VNC

nothing gets a geek more excited than... geek stuff... and possibly porn. just kidding.

this morning, i was working on a little computer project around the house. in general, i work on these home computer projects whenever karen is not around... because otherwise, i'd probably hear her tell me that the computer project is a waste of my time... to which i'd make fun of her and reply "what is this thing called technology?" for anyone curious, that is one of the things i do according to my nephew (pj). i make fun of auntie.

anyway, today's project involved vnc. now, i suck at vnc. for anyone curious, vnc is virtual network computing. according to my friend wikipedia vnc "is a graphical desktop sharing system that uses the RFB protocol to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.

VNC is platform-independent – a VNC viewer on one operating system may connect to a VNC server on the same or any other operating system. There are clients and servers for many GUI-based operating systems and for Java. Multiple clients may connect to a VNC server at the same time. Popular uses for this technology include remote technical support and accessing files on one's work computer from one's home computer, or vice versa."

so you may ask... what does all that jargon mean? to simply put it... i have two computers on my network: the one that i primarily use upstairs to do work and stuff; and the one that is downstairs in the living room which i primarily use to store my music and picture files. the computer downstairs is a server.

basically, i want to connect and control the downstairs computer from the computer upstairs... and vice versa (although i will probably never need to control the upstairs computer from the one downstairs). now, you may wonder how difficult could the task possibly be. normally, the task is not difficult at all if the computers were using the same operating system.

sadly, in my case the computer upstairs is using a microsoft operating system and the computer downstairs is using a linux operating system. (i dislike all things microsoft... so i try to avoid all things microsoft if i can. sorry bill gates. go open source!)

metaphorically, my computer project is like an apple trying to control an orange. i need them both to be susceptible to the powers of sugar goodness.

after some research... and a few downloads... i finally got my home computer project working. yay! geeks unite! for anyone curious, i used an open source application known as tightvnc. yes, it's "tight".

i'm quite happy now... especially since my apple can control my orange. and the funny thing is karen will never know... unless of course she reads this blog... which she doesn't.