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My Blog (I know, original...)Ramblings and links probably only important to myself. A scratch pad for ideas and projects that can be wherever I am (as long as I have net access). |
First I ran across "The Scene", now I stumbled across "From The Shadows". An independent online TV show. In the pilot episode, they set out to test the wireless network gaming capabilities of their Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Let's just say they set the bar high for episode 2 to top this one.
The "30 Days" series has been extended to cover Opera 8.0. I highly encourage Opera users to read this, I always learn something from his guides. If you don't use Opera, browse a few days' worth of it and you might be inclined to check out my browser of choice.
Here's a fairly in depth comparison of common tasks as seen in Windows XP, Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary" Live CD, and SUSE 9.3 Live DVD. All themes are defaults. It's intended to showcase how similar Linux is to Windows for people interested in Linux but scared they wouldn't be able to do anything. Spend a few minutes and you'll see there's a lot more in common than you might think. A program should have an intuitive interface, regardless of platform. I think these screenshots highlight this to some degree.
Here's some interesting FAQ material regarding Sony's PSP. For example, I wondered why all the pictures of the PSP I see have a blue background but mine was pink... did I buy a girls version? No, it's controlled by the date. Every month you get one of 12 background colors. April's color just happened to be pink. Next month it's Dark Green.
Check out these screenshots for Serious Sam 2. It's about time this game started getting some press! Alternate link here.
In a heroic gesture, Opera Software CEO abandons his attempt to swim from Norway to the US to rescue Opera's PR Manager from drowning as their company raft started sinking. Click the link above for dramatic photos from the rescue! :)
As reported on Engadget.com, the Canadian DVD-by-mail rental chain Movies For Me has vowed to rent all UMD movies made for the PSP as they are released. Seeing as their pricepoint is similar and their target audience is similar, it's logical to ask if any of the "big boys" will do it as well? Netflix, Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster all have a significant online DVD rental presence. The biggest different I see is that UMD disks are a little thicker (and perhaps more fragile?) than a DVD in a mailer.
I recently ran across a forum posting mentioning the program htop as a replacement for the handy top program I've used for quite some time. A quick "sudo apt-get update && apt-get install htop" later and I was pleasantly surprised at the added user-friendliness. Check it out if you haven't already.
After reading CNN.com's article on the remakes of: The Birds, The Hitcher, Psycho, Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other recently released or announced remakes such as: Walking Tall, The Ladykillers, The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven, Planet of the Apes, Mr. Deeds, The Longest Yard, The Manchurian Candidate, Willy Wonka, Dawn of the Dead, Assault on Precinct 13, Alfie, War of the Worlds, and the list goes on...
Here is the first part of a series on the Ten Commandments of system administration. Commandment I is certainly a very important one.
It's something I've known for years and eWeek.com does a good job of highlighting. Opera is at the forefront of browser innovation. Just off the top of my head, for me at least, Opera was the first browser I ever used that had: tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, MDI (multiple document interface -- when using tabs or not), inline searching, a plethora of customizable keyboard shortcuts, "real" cached histories allowing very fast "back" browsing, full page scaling (including graphics and flash), easy toggling of graphics on/off/cached, reload every x seconds, closed page undo, trashcan of recently closed pages to look through, notepad to quickly/easily jot notes while surfing, nicknamed bookmarks, and if I thought more than 3 minutes I'm sure I could come up with more... like author view, magic wand, linked pages, view links, favicons, quick/easy skinning, personal bar, small screen rendering, fit to width viewing, voice browsing, etc. That's not even mentioning pop-up blocking, browser ID spoofing to overcome numbskull websites dishing out crap for certain browsers, easy disabling for GIFs, sound, javascript, plugins, etc. I'm glad I didn't spend much more than 3 minutes on this list... ;)
Four skydivers decided to try wireless gaming while skydiving recently and discovered that at distances up to 400 feet, falling at 120 mph, they had no trouble forming the ad hoc network needed for wireless play. I think I'll take their word for it. :)
Join H. Twain Weck (aka John Cleese) as he tells us about the Institute for Backup Trauma. More of a mockumentary than an ad, it's pretty funny. And whatever you do, don't press the third button!
It's nice to see a for-profit company show it's sense of humor to the public. I'd like to think if I ran a company that it wouldn't be all "business".
PORTLAND, Ore. - Elwood "Woody" Norris pointed a metal frequency emitter at one of perhaps 30 people who had come to see his invention. The emitter — an aluminum square — was hooked up by a wire to a CD player. Norris switched on the CD player.
If your need a refresher of Star Wars Episode I or Episode II, here are some Flash summaries for your viewing pleasure.
Opera's download servers ground to a halt as 120 downloads per second were initiated within the first hour after their long await Opera 8.0 browser was released this week.
Here's a nice overview of the USB system used in Linux. It helps clear up a little of what's going on under the hood.
After Croteam's site stated Take 2 Interactive had asked them to stop posting updates about Serious Sam 2, some of us were a little less than enthusiastic. But now, there's some new news. When the Serious Sam: The First Encounter hit, it was classic Doom/Quake style gameplay of "shoot anything that moves" but SS:TFE upped the ante by having rich outdoor settings where dozens and dozens of enemies could attack simultaneously. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter upped the ante a little more and they were both a blast. Full co-op multiplayer was a definite plus.
Here's a nice summary of what goes into implementing password protected web pages when you're running your own web server.
I stumbled across a recent interview with one of the founders of the cross platform network backup program Bacula. I definitely need to look into this as I was hoping to automate a backup system that could cover both Linux and Windows systems in a unified manner. These guys really sound like they've taken that idea and ran with it.
I kept following all the message threads on http://ubuntuforums.org trying to figure out how to get the dependencies for transcode and dvdrip to resolve and was having no luck. Finally I stumbled across a nugget that led me to getting both to install as I'd wanted. I've used Synaptic quite a bit but 99% of the time it's the same process all the way through. What I had to do was to click on the transcode package, then under the Packages menu, I chose "force version" and chose not the Ubuntu one, but the Sarge testing one (I think it was marrilat -- I'm not at my machine so forgive any spelling errors, if you found this post to read, you'd undoubtedly run across people telling you to add that site to your /etc/apt/sources.list a hundred times already). Anyway, after forcing that repository to be used, transcode installed without incident. I did the same with dvdrip and it installed as well. It seems to run fine. I can't tell any problems it's having from library versions or missing dependencies, so I'm assuming all is well.
After having "less than perfect" results from Dvd::rip, I think I'll give AcidRip a try. It uses a completely different process behind the scenes. I ran Dvd::rip and it got to within 90 seconds of the end and seemingly hung. The AVI file didn't have the index in it, so everytime I tried to run it I couldn't reliably fast forward or rewind. I tried "mplayer -idx
This guy learns classic videogame themes and plays them on his piano (often blindfolded!) Very impressive! If you played any of these classic games, you'll immediately recognize the music he's playing.
Adobe buys Macromedia for $3.4 billion. The deal is expected to close in the fall pending regulatory approval.
Check out Thoggen for a native Linux DVD transcoding program. Ironically, WINE seems to be able to run DVDShrink and DVDDecrypter. Not such a shabby backup plan if you ask me.
A Seattle woman sued Comcast for giving her name and contact information to the RIAA. Let the ever-increasing Comcast bashing continue...
Comcast is offering $1.43/day to customers complaining about their recent outages. Hmmm. $1.43/day. Thanks guys. Thanks for jumping out there to the bare minimum that can possibly be considered fair. You aren't making people pay for their service during that timeframe. What you need to do though is be more than fair. How about a free week of service for each major outage? You have two outages in a month? That's 50% of the customer's monthly bill. Does that seem steep to you? Well you know what? Most people only have one source of internet access, Comcast. And if Comcast goes out, they're out everything as far as net connectivity goes. Why shouldn't you be out your monthly income if you can't provide that service? A buck forty three is a slap in the face. I got a bonus one time while working my way through college. The bonus was less than a buck. Can I tell you what a negative impact that bonus had on our crew? We (and everyone) would've been better off had we gotten nothing. To see it written out as a number, what the powers that be thought our time/effort was worth. I tell you, I'm current caught between a rock (Comcast) and a hard place (next closest competitor being like 1/8th the speed), but the time will come when Comcast doesn't have such a monopoly in my area and I will feel no remorse switching to some other company in an attempt to find someone that still remembers what "customer service" means. By the way Comcast, hope your waitress doesn't spill any water on your lap at dinner tonight. In your world they'd just get you another glass at no charge to show their concern.
Widespread outages on Comcast's servers were reported for the 2nd night in a row and the third time in two weeks. People are starting to look elsewhere for service as little to no information or support is flowing from the Comcast camp. And if someone can explain why 9 out of 10 times I type Comcast it comes out Cocmast? Maybe there's hidden meaning there, not sure.
This is just a small rant rather than a link to a particular article. Tuesday, April 12th came with its big "Windows Update" event... XP SP2 was no longer optional, 8 major updates posted to Windows Update, etc... what I noticed (and I only seemed to have 6 waiting for me) was that three of the updates in their description had the exact same rather long phrase in them:
Here's an article on Matt Thomas' first 48 hours using Ubuntu Linux. It's his first "usable" Linux experience. I'm only putting this entry in my blog because at the time I tried to read his posting, his ISP had marked his page as having exceeded its bandwidth limit and I couldn't read it. As a user of Ubuntu, I was curious to read what he considered were still flaws in the Linux Desktop. And I would certainly counter with what I feel are flaws in the Windows desktop but I'm not sure on what level Matt is complaining just yet so I'm reserving judgement.
Another round of Comcast service outages this week with little to no response from Comcast as to why. Grrr.... I wish they still had the "network status" page that AT&T had when it was their network. I'm always left wondering if it's the network, my modem needing reset, my router/switches, or possibly just my machine. An "average" user would have no clue what was up.
Stay up late and need to turn in that CS paper in 20 minutes? No problem, just generate a random CS paper and turn it in. No promises you'll get a good grade, but to the layman you'll be a genius! Somewhere, someone will actually turn one of these in for a real grade (the site shows how they submitted the paper as a real assignment). Funny stuff.
Hitachi chose to introduce their new perpendicular technology used to increase hard drive capacity via a Schoolhouse Rock style flash movie. Funny stuff.
I read about this earlier this week but only now found an easy to use link. This guy tried to pay for his order in $2 bills and ended up
Read here for a brief overview of an automatic setup script that simplifies installing common items for a fresh Hoary install
Read here for more info on this script.
Read the press release regarding Ubuntu/Kubunt 5.04 being released today. For those unfamiliar with Ubuntu, think of Debian GNU/Linux but much more up to date. The power of "apt-get" without running 18-36 months behind the bleeding edge. Ubuntu's versioning system is a bit non-standard as well, the versions will always have a one digit year indicator, followed by the two digit month indicator. So version 5.04 is the release from April 2005. I can only assume in 2010 they'll move to a two digit year indicator. :) Ubuntu is a very impressive installation and is the only one I've easily been able to get all my random hardware working in easily. I had no trouble getting drivers for my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Audigy, USB Hard Drive, my high resolution monitor (with correct vertical refresh rates), heck even my ATI Remote Wonder seemed to work out of the box!
Place this file as .fonts.conf in your home directory and log out/in to have smoother fonts. This really enhanced the font quality and gets rid of the "jaggies" in some fonts. It gives your screen more of a "Mac" look in terms of crisp fonts. It also made it much easier to read small fonts at high resolution.
From the "Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who thinks this is a good idea" department, comes news that Comcast/TiVo is testing a plan to "refresh" ads in your digital recordings with more recent or more targeted ads.
Google Maps adds satellite imagery for most of its maps. Not all maps are covered at all zoom levels (sorry Myrtle Point).
More of a note to myself more than anything, here's a list of Linux games to check out:
Visit my bookmark page.
