Latest News
Well, it’s been a while since the last post. I had a hardware issue with my main system and had to replace the motherboard. Everything is back up and running again now. I decided to buy my first Asus board. So far I have been happy with it. Even the manual was pretty good for those who are into a good read 
AMD really needs to decide on a socket type and stick with it though – 754, 939, m40 oh my!
I did end up getting my cell phone back a day or two past the 10-14 days they said it would take, but it has been behaving well from what I have seen so far. It did mysteriously shut off a couple of times when I first got it back, I ended up reloading the battery and it has been fine since then. I am considering buying a new phone and giving my v511 to my roommate and we may end up going with a family plan instead. This could mean the end of two home phone lines as we are both tired of paying Bell each month for lines that are hardly used.
Linux Updates — My distro of choice – Arch Linux has had two interesting stories this past week. The modularization of Xorg was moved from testing repos to the main repos. In other words – X (what is responsible for allowing you to have a graphical desktop as opposed to text based only) has been split into several pieces instead of just one file. There are two distinct advantages for this: one is that it allows you to install only the files that you absolutely need which streamlines your system by saving diskspace and giving you a more pure package database. The second is that it allows developers to work on individualized packages in terms of adding features or enhancing them without affecting one entire package.
The second Arch story was the server drive. Judd (creator of Arch) issued a plea to the public of Arch users to help out financially so that Arch could have a new server since the previous one was being overloaded and therefore the main Arch site was going down at times. The response was unbelievable! If you check the main site: archlinux.org you will see a progress meter that is insanely past its original goal. What will be done with all this extra money? Well, Judd has said Arch will be able to get an even better server than originally expected and the use of the other money is undecided, but it could be saved for the next investment needed. I don’t recall Judd ever asking for money from the community and this is certainly a worthwhile cause. After all, it’s easy to give to a cause when you are not *expected* or *forced* to give money as Linux competitors require. I was impressed and proud to see the amount of support that poured in not only financially but also through emails and such. What a great community that is dedicated to ensuring the future of Arch Linux!
New Music – Due to not yet having a cd player in my car that reads mp3’s, I am stuck with burning new audio cd’s once in a while. My latest idea is to make an extremely heavy CD containing all fairly new metalhead songs. I started to make a list, but about 20 songs are needed to fill a CD and without being able to dedicate the kind of time to listening to music that I would like, I had a list of about 7 songs. Then I happened to see a video on MuchLoud called “Undying” by Demon Hunter which was instantly a new fave. I since have acquired almost every Demon Hunter song available and I am having a great deal of difficulty finding one that I want to discard from my new CD project. For anyone into heavier music, I would strongly recommend these guys. I would compare them musically a bit to Atreyu or even Killswitch engage but with some heavier parts. Their newest release called “Triptych” would be where to start if you’ve never heard any Demon Hunter before. Some of their earlier material is amazing too, but the newer CD is a bit more polished and easier to get into for the average person. I may have a few new CD’s to make now due to this new discovery.
Originally, I had some Ill Nino, Killswitch Engage, Six Feet Under and Demon Hunter planned, but I am looking at doing one Demon Hunter CD separately and then an additional one for the other tracks.
Azureus and Bittorrent woes continue. It’s still killing my network, i’ve adjusted numerous settings and nothing appears to be working. I used to pull in files at over 400K and now i’m stuck around 50 on good files. I’ve been hearing the same from other users – is this the downfall of torrents?