Too bloated – Ubuntu now comes in many flavors and for anyone who is at least at an intermediate level, turning off or even removing unneeded services or applications should not be an issue.

Slow compared to other distros – aside from the previous point, Ubuntu has also sped up its boot time quite a bit with the Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 release.

Not enough packages available – with the usage of universe and multiverse, you can obtain just about any application you need.

Bloated default kernel – Ubuntu has improved its core kernel quite a bit over the years and there is a way to recompile the default Ubuntu kernel to suit your needs if you are that picky (if Im not doing it, you probably don’t need to).

Not flashy enough – Ubuntu’s use of compiz and it’s improved grub splash image are sleek and seemless.

64 bit – Ubuntu’s 64 bit version is as polished as any other distros these days.

Community – Ubuntu has a wealth of information on their forums that is useful not only for Ubuntu for other Linux distros.

Benchmarking – when anyone does benchmarking, Ubuntu is the version that just about everyone uses so you get to see what your OS can do and how it compares.

Safe upgrading – Although Ubuntu doesn’t have a rolling release style of upgrading, it does have a graphical upgrade tool (update-manager) which makes moving to the next major release quite painless. I have thoroughly used Ubuntu through alpha, beta and offical releases and I can say that by the time the official release comes around, there are fewers issues upgrading with Ubuntu than even its own derivatives.

I’ve been a long time user of a distro that afforded me all of the control I wanted over the years, but ultimately, now after several years of Ubuntu polishing, that control is no longer an advantage. It’s time to make the switch. At this time, there is no other distro that meets the mark on as many levels as the product of Canonical. It’s clear that they are here to stay and have conjured up a well oiled machine that continues to glide smoothly across the Linux landscape. Ubuntu is not just worthy of converting Windows users, it is worthy of converting most Linux users.

If you happen to have any video files that are 720p and in an MKV (mastoska video) container, you will soon find out that your PS3 will not play them.

There are various arguments on the net about using MKV as a video container. Apparently it offers a bit more versatility in terms of encoding options so the vast majority of hi-res videos are done in the .mkv file extension.

I found a fast and easy way to fix this problem. I use a program called MKV2VOB. Unfortunately it only seems to work well enough in Windows. I tried it in Wine but it wouldn’t even open properly. If anyone knows of an app that will work in Linux the same way, then please let me know.

Another catch is that I find this only works well with 720p files. Essentially what the app does it change the container which the video is within. So, if you have an mkv file that you know won’t work on your PS3 (yes, I did try transcoding from a media server but the power required must be astronomical because my dual core AMD 3500 with 4gb ram couldn’t play these files. All you need to do is load up MKV2VOB and then open your file and select a destination where you want your redone video placed. I did not change any default settings at all.  Essentially it is doing is changing the container from mkv to mpeg. It does not need to transcode to do this. It only will Mux the video so that it is in a different container. I find it takes only about 30 seconds at most for a video even of around 4gb size. Note – this is the result only for 720p resolutions or lower. If you want to change the container for a video file with 1080p resolution, it seems to require transcoding which is a very long process in comparison. I have not noticed any 720p files that required transcoding yet. The resulting file should be an mpeg file and should play just fine on your PS3 while still retaining the same resolution and quality including the sound.

I am hoping that newer versions of MKV2VOB will work better with 1080p videos but at least it makes all of those 720p mkv files useful for PS3 owners.

I did try to play some of these videos through PS3 Media Server and have it transcode on the fly, but my CPU on my server was not powerful enough to do so. With my dual core machine with 4gb ram not being able to properly play a larger mkv container file without slowing down or clipping, it makes me curious as to what would be necessary to play these files with mkv container files.

Hopefully this post can save some people some of the time and trial and error I went through to figure things out. Better yet, hopefully down the road we will get a better container that offers all of the same benefits of mkv but also has better compatibility and doesn’t seem to require such vast amounts of CPU power to play.

The GSP vs Penn fight ended up going 4 rounds with GSP becoming more and more dominant round by round. GSP had a smart gameplan and he implemented it perfectly. He mentioned after the fight that he wanted to take down Penn and get blood running to his shoulders and away from his hands so that his boxing would be nullified. That’s exactly what seemed to happen. The ironic part came at the end of the fourth round after GSP had continually side mounted Penn and peppered him with hammerfists and elbows. BJ didn’t seem to know where he was, having to be redirected to his own corner which Penn criticized GSP for in their first fight after the initial round.

The doctor examined Penn after the fourth round and appeared willing to let the fight continue. BJs brother tapped the Dr on the shoulder and gave the signal for the fight to end. BJ himself did not protest. So much for fighting to the death. Although trash talking can be seen as just hyping up a fight, it really can make someone look foolish if they lose – especially in the same way they uttered contempt for anyone who would tap from strikes like a ‘little bitch’ which is essentially what BJ did.

Next up for GSP – Thiago Alves.  Somehow I don’t think Alves will be trash talking like BJ did. Alves has already demonstrated respect for GSP.

I was eagerly anticipating the fight between Thiago Silva and Lyoto Machida. My criticism of Machida in the past wasn’t so much that he avoided strikes but moreso for his lack of offense and aggression which in turn made it just look like he was running away the whole fight. Machida may have finally put things together for this fight. He definitely looked the more aggressive of the two fighters and landed numerous strikes and at the same time, avoided punishment. I had not been much of a fan of watching Machida in the past, but I was happy to see him show a more complete performance this time around. It will lead to more success for him, more entertaining fights and perhaps even a light heavyweight title.

Nate Diaz vs Clay Guida. Clay Guida managed to outwork Diaz in this fight. Diaz seemed like he didn’t even show up. Diaz seemed to lack any zero sense of urgency. What didn’t help Diaz’ chances was that Guida basically hugged Diaz for the preponderance of the fight and the referee failed to separate them despite Guida not doing any damage whatsoever.

Overall it was a good night of fights and it did well to deliver on a much hyped event.

The winner of this matchup would be invariably forced to coach the following season of the Ultimate Fighter. Rich made it abundantly clear that he did not want to endure this a second time. Henderson, on the other hand, seemed to relish the opportunity. In addition, the impending coach of the Ultimate Fighter would end up fighting against Michael Bisping at 185 pounds. This is the weight class that Rich just left (as per nudging from the UFC) after getting dismantled twice by Anderson Silva. Also, the filming of the Ultimate Fighter would take several months and this would mean that the coach would not fight until the end of the season. My feeling is that Rich wants to stay at 205 pounds,  does not want to coach on the Ultimate Fighter and would not favor a long layoff before fighting again.

The conclusion — Rich Franklin had nothing to gain by winning the fight against Dan Henderson.

The result of the fight was a decision victory by Dan Henderson which I agreed with wholeheartedly. Rich lacked any killer instinct and did not seem himself. He had previously mentioned his confidence in the clinch yet he offered very little offense in this position. I counted one flailing knee and did not see any type of ongoing forward movement or aggression until the third round when Franklin was clearly down by two rounds. There was no sense of urgency on Rich’s part, it seemed, in round 3 either.

While I’m not saying for sure that Rich threw the fight, I cannot ignore it as a possibility. The complete lack of incentive to win and the uncharacteristic performance definitely garner some suspicion. I suppose only Rich will truly know what happened.

As an afterthought, I was watching this event with a friend who is relatively new to viewing MMA and I must say that I felt embarrassed by the Coleman vs Rua fight. I have to give Coleman credit for competing at his age and acknowledge his impressive physique, but Rua has no excuse. Rua looked terrible against Forrest Griffin and looked just as bad against Coleman. I even thought the stoppage was questionable. While Coleman definitely looked spent, both fighters looked exhausted since the first round! Had Coleman looked incapacitated all of a sudden, I could justify the stoppage, but Coleman looked gassed from early on in the fight and so did Rua. This one probably should have gone to the judges. Just my opinion.

Downloadable Music – By far Rock Band has the most downloadable music (often referred to as downloadable content) in comparison to any other music game. Not only is the mass of DLC superior, but Harmonix also allows you to import almost all of your Rock Band 1 songs for play into Rock Band 2 for a $5.99 fee through the corresponding store (Playstation Store or Xbox Marketplace). Despite its dominance, Rock Band’s DLC can be improved. Recently Harmonix decided to expand its horizons and release a country pack and for the holiday season, a collection of Christmas songs were released. It would be interesting to see the sales on these items. I wouldn’t expect them to be best sellers. While downloadable music opportunities are restricted to an extent by the willingness of the record company to license the music as available, it might still be a good idea to allow user voting and then communicate more with the users as to what the status of the development is on these tracks.

Presale Previews – A very simple enhancement that might really help sales would be to put either audio or video previews on the Playstations Store and Xbox Marketplace. In some cases, the user may not know the song by title and artist but rather by listening to it. Even a short audio preview would accomplish this reminder. A video showing the song playing and how the notes are organized ingame might be even more useful.

Game Enhancements – While Harmonix may be hesistant to do this due to concentrating on getting more downloadable music and also wanting to leave some new features for future Rock Band releases, consumers no doubt would appreciate some game enhancements. Criterion who make Burnout Paradise have probably done the best job with DLC to improve the gaming experience. Criterion also made all of the enhancements free which Harmonix would not be required to do, but some specific improvements would really make game play better. Here is my wishlist:

• Countdown into game after pausing (this could be added as an option as it is in Guitar Hero)
• Ability to create your own tour (pick your own songs to be played on whichever level you want and construct your own custom tour which would add replayability)
• Song timer – add an option to include the time remaining in the song on the screen.
• More freedom in Quickplay with setlists – when making a setlist and choosing a difficulty level, the user is chained to placing all songs on the same difficulty level. As we know, some songs on medium as equivalent in difficulty to some songs on expert.
• Reward instead of punishment for trying higher difficulty levels – Despite your current status (on tour your user should have a # of stars and a noted difficulty level), you are punished by losing fans if you fail on a higher difficulty level. This takes away from a user trying out a harder setting. I would suggest not taking away any fans unless the user is already at the same or higher difficulty level than the setting they are currently attempting. For example, you have 5 stars on Hard and try expert and fail – no fans are lost. However, you have 5 stars on Expert and try a song on Hard, you would lose fans if you failed. This does not take into account that different songs vary in challenge depending on the song itself, but it’s a start.
• Better stats recording – Have a separate high score for each difficulty level. A comprehensive chart in the main menu showing all high scores for each instrument for each level would be a nice add-on.
• New High Score notification – this can be done on all modes. When a user attains a new high score, include a new high score notification once the song is done.
• Include an option to show how many notes are consecutively correct on screen during gameplay.

These are all ideas for enhancements that could be done via patching or even made available for a fee through the respective storefronts.

Will we see any of these improvements issued by Harmonix or are they too nervous to ruin a good thing as it stands or maybe they need to save features to help sell future Rock Band releases?

A coworker had mentioned wanting to get an LCD tv but was on a tight budget so I had found some great deals several months back but he didn’t have the cash to pick one up. I subsequently stopped looking around. Eventually my own LCD monitor’s condition worsened to the point where I thought about replacing it. I opted for the idea of getting an LCD TV. This is to be used in my room and I could get cable working there as well as a bonus. I was flipping through a flyer for the source and first noticed a Sony Bravia 32″ on sale for $599 which was $200 off the original price. I decided to go online and look at it in more detail. I searched for the TV and sorted by price and ended up finding an LG 32″ which was originally $849 on for $599 also. Having just recently upgraded my main TV to an LG 47″, I decided that the 32″ LG would be best for me so I bought it.

Now, onto the geek stuff… My main concern was the limited resolution compared to my previous 22″. The new LG, even though it was 32″, was limited to a resolution of 1360×768. I was concerned that this might be too large compared to the 1920×1200 resolution I was getting from my 22″. It ended up being fine and I am writing this entry on the new LCD. The color is fantastic and it’s great to have such a nice big screen. It doesn’t look ridiculous on my desk as it only a 32″. It also helps with playing games like Fofix (Frets on Fire fork). All 4 operating systems look great on the screen as well.

I would definitely recommend going with an LCD TV with a larger screen size for a computer, if you can afford a few exra dollars.  It is definitely worthwhile. Now, what do I do with that damaged 22″ inch LCD?

Finally, after all of these releases, I encountered a problem that I could not seem to fix entirely. Not surprisingly, it was with Nvidia. The issue that I noticed was that I was not able to play any 3D accelerated games in full screen. I am not talking about high level graphically demanding games but rather Frets on Fire. I even installed a derivative of Tuxracer from the Ubuntu repos to test and it would not work either.

Normally I would have continued attacking the issue, but I really wanted to get Frets on Fire but mainly the fork called Fofix working. So, instead, I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10 on a different partition for testing. I had testing the same software on a couple of different machines running the same version of Ubuntu and one even contained an Nvidia graphics card. Both worked fine. In fact, the full screen mode had been working fine on my own install until a recent upgrade.

The main issue was with the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 file which apparently was owned by both the Ubuntu Nvidia package and one called libgl1-mesa-glx. The issue was reported as a bug. My system was actually a 32 bit install but no matter what I tried, I could not fix this issue. I tried using aptitude, dpkg and apt-get along with synaptic to force and overwrite just about anything that I thought would fix the issue. In the end, I figured that after numerous alpha and beta transitions it might be time to try a new install. So, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 final release on a different partition and everything seemed to work as planned. I did uninstall network manager and manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces file in order to achieve using a fixed IP address. Network manager seemed to allow me to edit the settings, but didn’t seem to change them properly. For example, there is no much thing as a Netmask value known as “24″, yet every time I entered 255.255.255.0, that’s what it returned. Network manager is fairly advanced in some respects, but in other ways, it needs a lot of work.

With my fresh install, I have Frets on Fire working and Fofix fires right up in full screen. I had no trouble installing the Nvidia driver provided by the Ubuntu repositories as well. My old install must contain some old files or rules that interfere. Yes, I did use the “Cruft Remover” which is a handy new tool but that didn’t solve this particular problem.

I am fairly confident that had I not taken my install through all of the alpha and beta releases that I would not have encountered this issue. It also makes it nearly impossible to get help on it as not many people would be so masochistic. I am not sure what I will do with my current previous Ubuntu install. I may just keep it around for non-production use and to see the new features only and leave my new install for official releases only.

One of the bonuses with the new install is a faster boot time, nicer and more modern boot screen. In the meantime, I can try a really thorough clean up on my previous install and see what happens from there.

I went 7 for 10 on my picks overall with which I was happy since there were some really tough picks. Unfortunately one of the fights I lost was the Alexander vs Schafer bout.

I’m sure Alexander will never read this nor anyone who trains him, but nonetheless, the secret is out: there is an easy formula to beat Houston Alexander and he proved it that night. As great of a fighter that Thiago Silva is, it was surprising how easily he dominated Alexander in his victory over the Nebraska native. Houston was exposed. He had a weak ground game, possibly nonexistant ground defense. After that loss, one would think that Houston and his trainers would work tirelessly to improve his ground game as he looked completely helpless and dominated by Silva. We didn’t get a chance to see it tested until Fight Night 15 because his previous fight was a knockout courtesy of a superman punch landed by James “The Sandman” Irvin. Schafer divulged his own strategy for beating Alexander: get through the intial onslaught of punches and then take over, which is exactly what Schafer did. I was impressed with Schafer’s ability to work through that barrage since some of Alexander’s strikes landed cleanly and would have knocked out many a foe. Schafer then took over and it was a carbon copy of the Silva fight. Alexander is now 2-3 in the UFC and had just signed an extension with the MMA juggernaut prior to this matchup. UFC is notorious for releasing fighters when they don’t win, but Alexander is still a big draw due to his all or nothing fighting style.

Alexander is a very likable character and seems like a genuinely nice guy, but if he wants to stay around in the UFC, the ground game or take down defense needs to improve prior to his next fight or it could be all over.

In terms of the future of Carrier, we can only hope that the recent past is not an indication of future development. Carrier has a great opportunity to attract users. It won’t attract as many as it did when it initially started though since one of the main reasons for its creation was to enable the text resizing box during chats and secondly Pidgin is still the defacto IM client included with a lot of distros. While a lot of Linux users will put forth the extra effort to replace Pidgin with Carrier if they feel strongly enough about it, for most people, they are likely to leave well enough alone.

I am not giving up on Carrier yet though. The current version took a bit long for my liking to be released, but it’s here now and it works very well.

My advice for the developers at Carrier would be to make packages readily available for various distros including the most up to date version and make them easy to find on the website. For example. the preamble for the Ubuntu version still links to version 2.4.1. Also, keep up to date and respond to people in the forums more regularly. After all, from your main stanza on the homepage, you indicate: “What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you.” If that is truly the case, then it needs to be demonstrated fully.

Ubuntu  – I’ve done several installs for people lately on newer systems and they just work. Even webcams are working instantly right after installing ‘Cheese’.

Arch Linux – I’ve had Arch installed on several boxes at home for about 5 years. It runs solidly. I use custom kernels (2.6.26) and use 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need nor want to make any drastic changes to them.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it is quite good, but it does take away the challenge I used to enjoy.

So, when I get into the mood to break something and then try to fix it, I think of using Ubuntu Alpha releases but as mentioned in an earlier post, even those don’t cause me any issues anymore.Moreso than fixing things I’d like to try something that offers some unique value in doing things differently.

I do try out some different distros here and there but I am not really finding anything unique enough to pique my interest. Recently I’ve tried OpenSolaris (just because) and it was a disaster and pretty much unusable (very slow package manager, missing common packages I wanted). I did an upgrade and it wouldn’t boot afterwards.  I also tried OpenSuSE 11, Mandriva Spring and Mint. That’s the story with Linux lately. At one time I did set up a box in only command line and I currently use a custom built Linux router as well. What else is there?

OK, so there is OSX. I’ve used OSX86 and it is a decent OS. I really don’t have anything negative to say about it. I do miss a lot of things that I have in Linux when I use OSX but I understand that it is a designed in a specific manner so I can’t criticize the product but perhaps the concept but I’m not even going to do that. The truth is that it’s decent enough, but doesn’t provide me with anything really interesting and innovative in terms of configuration and such. Also, I am of the belief to truly get the full OSX experience, one needs to switch over to it fully which I am not prepared to do right now and likely never.

In terms of Windows, I’ve made my comments on Vista already and I’m pretty tired of XP. In fact, I would be all over using Vista at work if the opportunity presented itself (assuming Linux was not an option either).

So, where does that leave things now? If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to trying something out, but I’d like to try something that is unique somehow and offers some kind of benefit or optimization. I’ve tried just about every desktop environment and window manager as well.

Firstly, my initial disclaimer is that while there will be technical information in this article, it is also based on opinion and personal experience and therefore if anything, it is a personal account of the usefulness or lack thereof of a swap partition and thoughts, ideas and assertions are welcome.

When I first started using Linux many years ago (maybe 6 now), one its distinct unique qualities was the use of a Swap partition. Initially, I didn’t ask too many questions as I was eager to leave behind the OS that had caused me frustration over the past years. As time went on and I gained more experiences with Linux, I continually would use a swap partition on any new installs and would be asked by anyone for whom I created a set up about the reason for creating this swap partition.

In basic terms I was always told that the purpose of the swap partition was mainly to allow the system access to more memory if your RAM was used up. Therefore, this was useful on systems with low amounts of memory or on machines where there would be a lot of RAM usage thus causing it to be fully used and therefore require additional memory which swap would provide.

Even with older machines or ones lacking RAM, I observed that swap was barely used. Typically on systems with at least 1GB of RAM, I never see any swap used. I suppose this could happen if there was a great deal of memory usage due to intense audio, video, compiling or some other kind of processing.

Newer machines will often have 2 CPU cores and at least 1GB of ram and usually I recommend that at least 2GB of RAM is a decent amount for a newer machine. Considering the processing power and inexpensive nature of adding more RAM, what happens to swap? Swap once had a purpose on older machines but now it seems that it is not only becoming unnecessary but also a burden perhaps?

Swap can have some negative affects as well. With the size of new hard drives these days using up 512mb or 1GB or swap space is certainly not an issue but if you like to use all Primary Partitions like me, then all of a sudden out of the gate you are down 1 of 4 Primary Partitions used on a hard drive (I’ve heard there are ways around this but I am not including using third party software to create more Primary Partitions). So, for example, you are building a custom machine where you want several Primary partitions for a particular reason such as:

swap

/boot (to store your kernel and boot settings)

/ (your root filesystem)

/home (a separate home partition to keep your personal files on their own or even to share it with another distro installed on the same machine)

/var (separate log files or perhaps used for package building)

/usr (holds the majority of your application executables and global application settings in /usr/share)

/opt (could be used for applications you compile youself placed in a different directory other than /usr/ to keep them separated)

Clearly, partitioning is a personal choice and the decision is based upon your specific usage. However; if you use a swap partition, all of a sudden you are losing 1 primary partition. So, unless you create logical or extended partitions, it could be that one of your planned partitions is negated.

Swap Partition Pros:

May help speed up older machines lacking memory

May help speed up machines that require an industrial amount of processing (high tech audio, video or compiling) while performing other tasks

Makes your install ‘feel’ more like nix

Swap Partition Cons:

Uses up space and a primary partition

Disk Thrashing over time can damage your hard drive

Accessing the hard drive to use virtual memory is slower than RAM

Alternatives:

If you don’t want or need to use a swap partition, you can instead use a swap file. I am not going to post any links on how to do this right now, but if you do a web search for it, you can find lots of examples.

Although I do not plan on changing any of my current long running configurations as my swap partitions are typically the first partition in my table, I do not plan on using them anymore on any new systems – especially any that I plan on which I have multiboot configurations. I have one now where I can share the swap partition, but more than once I have wished that I did not create the swap partition in the first place. To me, there does not seem to be a need to use such a thing on a dual core machine with 4GB of RAM, better yet, it seems like a waste of a primary partition.

I think I’ve been testing the Ubuntu releases including all Alphas and Betas since probably Dapper Drake which was released in August of 2006. I do have to mention that I do not currently run Ubuntu as my main OS (Arch is awarded this position), however; I do support what Canonical is trying to do with Ubuntu and like to keep updated on its progress. So, the following are general tips on how to prevent breakage, fix issues and all the while enjoy the fact that you are running the most up to date version of Ubuntu available.

** Quick tip – do not delete your previous kernel and also backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to be extra safe

How do you upgrade to the next version when it is in Alpha or Beta?

You can do this in a couple of ways. If you prefer the graphical method, you can press Alt-F2 to bring up a run dialog box and type update-manager -d which will open up your Update Manager (assuming you have it installed) and give you the option to click on the button representing the next version. Another method is to use your terminal and type apt-get dist-upgrade which should find your latest version (although I have not tested this with Alphas so I cannot say for sure). As well, I believe that Synaptic would be able to get you to the next version as well even if it is a development version by allowing that preference.

Possible issue and their remedies:

Missing a dependency – Sometimes during upgrading, you will get a report that a dependency is missing. This is typically because the mirrors have not finished syncing. Your choices here are to simply wait until all of the packages are available (if you don’t clear your Apt cache then you can just download the missing packages instead of doing the whole lot again) or if you are really impatient, you can browse the various mirrors and try to download the individual packages and then install them using command line (dpkg -i pkgname) or by double clicking on the package icon which should prompt a GUI installer. Usually Apt is pretty good at giving you hints at how to fix the issue if one pops up so this is why I prefer to do these upgrades via the CLI (other than the initial upgrade to the next distro version).

Cannot Stop Service so Upgrade Fails – This has happened to me a few times. I like to run systems very optimized so I tend to eradicate services that I do not need. Although I can use B.U.M. to stop them, sometimes I prefer the old fashioned but more effective method of rc-update.d -f servicename remove which will remove the service from all runlevels and give you nice clear terminal output showing this has been done. While this is great for optimizing your system by ridding it of known unwanted services (ie – laptop services on a desktop), sometimes this causes some confusion when trying to move from one Ubuntu version to the next. I’ve seen Ubuntu try to stop a service and fail (because it was removed from runlevels or perhaps it isnt running) and then leave you in the cold. My solution for this is to simply repeat your original process of installing the service, allowing it to run temporarily and then disabling it after the upgrade. It is a bit tedious but it seems to get the job done.

Nvidia (I don’t use ATI) – I ALWAYS seem to run into an issue with Ubuntu and Nvidia during these upgrades. Between the combination of different kernel upgrades, restricted modules upgrades and the Nvidia driver upgrades, it tends to cause issues every single time I upgrade. I am happy to say that with Intrepid Ibex I only encountered one minor issue with this where I waited for a new repository sync and then my Nvidia driver worked. However, in the past I have had to go to the Nvidia website and manually install the driver. I would then keep testing the various incantations of the Ubuntu packaged Nvidia driver along with the linux-modules-restricted package with the corresponding kernel until it would work. The last time around was the worst as it only seemed to get resolved at Beta 3 if I recall correctly.

Application Issues – Well, these are testing versions of applications so I don’t expect perfection, but I will often get some really nice features that were not available in previous releases.

Xorg Issues – Very rarely but at least once I have had my X server screwed up by doing an upgrade. Nonetheless backing up your previous /etc/X11/xorg.conf as stated above is a good idea. This could mean no access to the proper resolution or even perhaps no access to X itself (dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg didn’t work).

That’s about all I can think of for now. Perhaps others have other issues they have run into? Maybe I forgot some that I experience, but these are the most common ones. None of them were showstoppers for me as I was able to fix them all or find a way around them. Not bad for Alphas. It seems it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find broken systems around my place. I used to enjoy playing around with them and getting them to work somehow. Ubuntu appears not to offer this feature (anymore?). For me, that can be a little bit disappointing in the sense that there isn’t much of a challenge, but overall its great because it means that the system is still fairly solid even in its most vulnerable state.

the following needs to be done in a terminal as your regular user (not root) in your user’s home directory

rm .recently-used.xbel
mkdir .recently-used.xbel

This in effect will disable your Recent Documents from your Gnome Menu.

What is strange about this is that a bug report has been filed since early 2005 and then option has still not been added.

To do my part, I registered on the bugtracker and re-iterated the option. If you want this added then the only way is to let them know on the launchpad. If you find the exclusion of disabling this feature annoying then make a comment on the bug tracker. After all, complaining is better defended when you actually do something productive to change the original annoyance

With all of that said, I believe that the text area resizing feature was once again added in a later release. While sometimes I can be forgiving, there is a fundamental reason why I choose to use Linux that I really appreciate which is not being force fed any features or lack thereof. It is for this reason that I quickly adopted the fork of Pidgin called FunPidgin. Funpidgin developers advertise on their site that “Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.” To me, this is a huge selling point. Even though the Pidgin developers may have added in the said feature in the end after a ridiculously long standoff, the feeling that this disregard for the average user still lingers strongly enough for me that I will likely never return to the original especially as long as there is an alternative and one with several more features at that!

I have recently uploaded the necessary packages to switch to Carrier on the ELG Arch Linux repositories for those in the know. This is available on 32 bit and 64 bit repos. For those who just want to install it manually, you will now need two packages: Webkit and Carrier for 32 bit systems from this directory and Webkit and Carrier for 64 bit systems from this directory. These can be installed using pacman -U pkgname in the corresponding order. Special thanks to Connor Behan who is one of the developers for FunPidgin/Carrier and put the effort into making a pkgbuild for Arch Linux users.

Among many reasons why I use Linux is the freedom from the large proprietary company that invariably will shove their ideas down their throat akin to a mother bird feeding her young worms or perhaps unsavory droppings.

I have been doing PC work on the side for many years so I have to admit that I am quite tired of XP so that is one bias of mine. I have read criticisms aplenty about Vista citing its incompatibility with software and hardware along with its UAC (which prompts the user to approve any admin actions) and flashy Aero theme which many have scorned for eating up too many resources. While there is some truth to all of those claims and others, I am not going to regurgitate them here.

Instead, I’d like to discuss the mistake that Microsoft made that people don’t really talk about. Microsoft has made a huge mistake with their system requirements for Vista which they have posted on their own website. Microsoft claims the following as minimum requirements:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

To me, this is plain foolish. Sure, a major criticism of the masses prior to Vista being released was their crazy hardware expectations. Realistically, I do not find the requirements to run Vista unreasonable – and I’m not even talking about the ones Microsoft recommends. I’m talking about what I would recommend:

• CPU preferably dual core but at least 2 Ghz or equivalent if not dual core
• 2GB of memory
• An add on graphics card with at least 256mb of its own memory manufactured within the last 2 years

I know there can be some scrutiny over these recommendations, however; times have changed and while some people may expect a new operating system to run on even lower specified hardware than one may currently own, newer features sometimes require more power. Vista Aero is a much nicer and more professional looking interface than XP in my opinion. It was time for the masses that use Windows to evolve. Of course I am not going to complain about those users who moved to Linux or Mac either

The point of what I’m saying goes back to Microsoft making a poor decision about their hardware specifications and then communicating this to the Vendors. Here is an example: I recently worked on a computer where someone said they hated the installed Vista mainly because it was too slow. The first thing I noticed was that this brand new machine was that it had only 512mb of memory. It had an AMD 3800 Sempron processor and an onboard video card. To me, Microsoft is basically asking the user to get frustrated with this setup. I bet if I upgraded the ram to 2gb even, the user would have a much different experience. Also, if I added a modern video card independent of being onboard, it would not only improve the resolution but also the usability of the interface by quite a bit.

If Microsoft really wanted Vista to be successul then they should have made the requirements higher and enforced vendors to do the same. If every PC shipped with Vista had a decent processor, adequate ram and a proper video card, the reviews for Vista may have taken a different tone. I’m sure people would criticized the OS for demanding too much, but realistically speaking, Apple doesn’t release any new machines with poor specifications that cause OSX to run sluggishly so perhaps Microsoft would just be lumped into the same category. I think perhaps being seen as a bit of a standoffish or expectant company for requiring higher specs would have been much better than the collective masses viewing its release as a failure.

This blog post was written on a Linux machine, but I would have done it on a Vista machine instead of an XP machine given the proper hardware if those two were my only choices.

Is Vista truly a failure or was its inauspicious release just doomed to failure based on performance issues due to weak hardware causing the masses to snowball negative publicity until it was buried?

I received some responses to my article and decided that I could look into the distros that I had listed under the CD/DVD method in more detail to see where they stood. This article is about Mandriva.

As a disclaimer, Mandrake/Mandriva and I historically did not get along well. Back in the days when the defacto easy distro race was between Red Hat and Mandrake, I always managed to get Red Hat to work very well, but I could never get Mandrake (then) to work properly. I knew people who swore by it, but it was never a good fit for me. I don’t have any bias toward Mandrake/Mandriva these days though as I don’t use it regularly on any of my boxes.

Due to my inactivity with Mandriva, I feel quite apt to evaluate it from a newbie perspective which is ideal for the type of experiment I am conducting – What it is like for a newbie to upgrade Mandriva to the latest version?

I have to also admit that I was given some tips via email on certain commands and such so I may appear a bit more familiar with things than my inexperience with Mandriva realistically would have elicited.

On to the test….

The first thing I did (upon recommendation) was download Mandriva 2008.0 Live CD for Gnome and the aim was upgrade it to Mandriva 2008.1. The point of this test is not to evaluate Mandriva as a distro, but I will make some comments along the way about my observations.

I managed to install Mandriva to my system and generally speaking the install went well. There is a very convenient Install button the desktop which was nice to see as that seems to be quite a friendly method. I was also impressed that not only did the live cd recognize that I had an Nvidia graphics card, but it also loaded the driver for me. So far, so good. I set up custom partitioning as I typically do. I recall feeling a bit off about the partitioning wizard though. Unfortunately I did not do any screenshots, but it seemed a bit too quick on formatting without double checking with the user on whether that was really what they wanted. A confirmation would help, I think. I can’t really dwell on it though since I didn’t take any screenshots of that scenario. The install went well otherwise and was done in about 5-10 mins on my AMD XP 3800 with 4GB memory. One thing that really bothered me was that I was forced to install a bootloader. I was given the option to install to the mbr or any other partition I wanted, but there was no option to bypass installing a bootloader. Maybe this was added to the 2008.1 installer? I added Mandriva to my bootloader on a different distro and was able to boot up fine.

Upon booting up for the first time I had to go through the paces of a first time boot configuration wizard. I have seen this before with other distros so it was no big deal. There was a small part about registering with Mandriva which made me feel like it was a bit commercial but there was an option to skip it so that was short lived.

When I arrived at the desktop, I was surprised to see some really odds things which I will list here (click on the text in each line for corresponding screenshots):

• Only 1GB of my 4GB of Memory was recognized (high memory support enabled in kernel by default?)
• Fonts were set at 60 DPI (I changed them to 96 and things were much better)
• Nvidia Driver was running but maybe my monitor detection didn’t work so well as my 22″ LCD had a max resolution of 1024×768. I ended up editing the xorg.conf file to get 1680×1050.
• The special Mandriva Gnome menu had some major redundancies here and here.

And onto the upgrade procedure. I didn’t see any pop up in the Gnome toolbar or anywhere in the menu indicating how to move to the next version. It was recommended to me to use the easyrpmi website to upgrade my version. I proceeded to (text is linked to screenshots again):

(keep in mind that I needed to use the “old” easyurpmi website since I was using 2008.0 or older)

• Pick the version of Mandriva I was using
• Select the Mirrors and Repositories I wanted
• Copy and Paste the output provided by the website into a root terminal

I was already feeling that this was quite the laborious process compared to other methods, but I continued on, undaunted and determined to give a fair evaluation.

I opened a terminal and became the almighty root user and copied the information as instructed. It went through some terminal lines and then stopped after only updating 2 additional packages – one of which was urpmi. I decided that I was going to try the same command again. This time it wanted to update 216 packages – now we’re getting somewhere. I let all of the packages update and rebooted for good measure and was disappointed when I didn’t see any evidence of being at the aim of 2008.1. So, I made sure my updates were completely done but that didn’t make any difference:

• My kernel was old
• My Firefox version was old
• My Gnome version was old
• My Nvidia driver was outdated
• My release was still at 2008.0

Easily, I am no expert at Mandriva, but I have been using Linux for several years (although anyone who reads this article only would think I’m a newbie for sure), however; the idea for this test was for a new user to the distro to be able to upgrade to the next version. I wasn’t able to do it so that doesn’t bode well for total neophtyes in my opinion. I know that I could have missed some steps or done some things wrong, there is no doubt about that, however; the point is that I should be able to do this upgrade notwithstanding or at least that was my hope. Any distro with rolling release cycles (although perhaps more difficult to set up, will automatically update you to the next version and while they may not do so in a 100% problem fashion all the time, I find them generally very stable). Ubuntu, for example, that has Update Manager which is a built in upgrade system and alerts you to moving to the next available version (not just package updates).

Mandriva could really use a step up in this department if it wants to capture more new users, but of course, that all depends on the intentions of the powers that be at Mandriva. If that is not the goal, then so be it, but it would be a great feature to add nonetheless.

The good news is that Mandriva is almost there. They have a graphical update tool that integrates nicely into the Gnome toolbar (green circular checkmark beside the volume speaker icon) and also some decent output of what is available for updating. The part that is missing is how to get to the next version.

I sincerely hope this is something that gets added to the Mandriva distribution as it will make it more accessible to more users.

I’m going to classify three categories here. The first is the rolling release cycle which basically renders a new ISO of the latest version which is only really useful to new installs because the distro gets automatically updated to the latest version through the package manager on an ongoing basis so there is no need for anything else.  The second is the distro specific upgrade tool. The third is the cd/dvd method. I know I will miss quite a few derivatives and such but you get the point.

Here are the categories…

Rolling Release

Arch
Gentoo
Slackware?
Others?

Upgrade Tool

Debian (dist-upgrade)
Ubuntu (GUI upgrade tool)

CD/DVD Method

Fedora?
SuSE?
Mandriva?

As far as I last checked, these were correct. I personally prefer the rolling release cycle method, but I do really appreciate that Debian and Ubuntu have their respective methods. I keep an Ubuntu install around on a backup box just to stay acclimated with how it is progressing and I do like it very much overall. I just prefer Arch as it seems to have less interference of built in system tools which is to my liking.

However, if memory serves me correctly, Fedora, SuSE and Mandriva all use the CD/DVD method. I know that Fedora can be upgraded through Yum but it is almost expected to have broken packages that need to be manually removed before the upgrade.

Maybe it’s just me but I find it unacceptable that any major Linux distro would expect someone to have to download a CD/DVD in order to upgrade. With today’s fast internet speeds and powerful systems, having the option and the convenience of issuing a few simple terminal commands (apt-get dist-upgrade, pacman -Syu etc) seems like a requisite feature. While I do think it is a good idea to release a CD/DVD (for dial up users etc), each major distro should have a built in option that is expected to work well to get the user to the next release version. I look at some of these major distros and really appreciate the work they put into not only making their product better, but also fixing bugs in desktop environments and keep getting blocked by this absence of a proper upgrade method when I think about the potential they could have to be on one of my backup boxes for more than just a testing stint or perhaps on one of my customer’s machines. I have installed Ubuntu for several customers and find it easy to upgrade and maintain. I could even log in remotely and do the upgrade process for them or even walk them through the literal handful of button clicks to do it themselves. Then I think about what it would be like if that was not an option and the CD/DVD method was the only safe way to upgrade. I would need to download it and burn it myself and then go over to their place and run the install and sit and wait for it to make sure everything went well. I am talking about doing this sort of thing for Linux neophytes.

Of course there is the supposition that there aren’t any decisive deal-breakers between the majors anymore which is why I can pick on something like an upgrade process. All of them basically use a fairly new kernel, new desktop environments and offer the user the choice when installing. They all seem to have access to using a variety of different file systems (not that a lot of people seem to care about that much anymore except for expert users). All have done well to make a large amount of major packages available to their users and each comes with a decent set of GUI configuration tools. I suppose I could mention that some come with all of the codecs needed to play mp3’s and videos, but that is more of a legal issue so I am giving it a mulligan.  There really isn’t much that distinguishes each of the majors from one another anymore other than say the distro artwork, the installer (seems all of them are easy enough these days) and perhaps which parent company with which it is associated. It seems to me that with all of the effort put into making a complete distro, an easy upgrade process should come as a staple item.

On a positive note, my personal litmus test for determining the quality of a distro is whether I believe I could use it long term if my precious Arch was no longer available. I am happy to say that I have no intention of doing any distro hopping for my main boxes. I’ve been running Arch solid without a reinstall for around 5 years amidst many hardware changes. However, I do feel like I would have a nice choice between some really well polished distros out there if my selection was limited. All things considered, since each seems to be on a fairly level playing field, the one that would win out would be one with an easy way to upgrade. In the course of using Ubuntu on a backup box, I’ve noticed that not only was I able to upgrade from each major release to the next, but I was also able to run through all of the alpha testing which was great (much fewer issues with the alpha releases than I expected by the way).

For any major out there — please remove your deal-breaker if you are only offering your users the CD/DVD method for upgrading. Give the users a proper, tested choice to upgrade via the internet.

OK, I’m done.

One of the major advantages of using Firefox is the accessibility to a variety of great add-ons. One of the major disadvantages is that some of these add-ons don’t get updated as frequently as you may like. Here are the add-ons I used and results of upgrading:

FireFTP is an FTP client built into FireFox. There was only a development version that was compatible with FF3 until a new release on June 17th. I like using this built in plugin as it provides the basic but necessary features. It would have been nice to have a proper release during the earlier FF3 betas, but at least the developer came through once the official FF3 came out.

AdBlock Plus is a great plugin that not only can block ads and flash content but also consequently makes web browsing faster due to not loading unnecessary garbage. This is one of the best plugins available and perhaps even a necessity. If I recall correctly, this plugin was available during the beta stages as well.

TabMix Plus became a quick favorite of mine after I realized that Tabbrowser Preferences was a dead product as it hadn’t been updated since October of 2006. It was a great plugin that offered the ability to open a new tab using your homepage instead of just a blank page. This was really the main option I wanted. Unfortunately, since it has not been updated, it is no longer compatible with FF3. I ended up finding TabMix Plus when I was looking through the add-on page for Tabbrowser Preferences. I’ve come to like TabMix Plus better in many ways. It has numerous more options and does of course include the homepage new tab option. Right now it seems only a development build is available, but at least it works fine with FF3. You can download the development build here.

Download StatusBar is something I’ve been using for quite a while. It is a highly configurable download bar that appears in the bottom left of the FF window and shows you progress of your downloads. It is quite handy and a lot more elegant and less clunky than the separate download window that FF provides. This add-on works fine with FF3.

Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in some ways with the lack of development of some of the plugins, but one has to remember that these are hobbiest projects sometimes so therefore there cannot be expecations placed on the developers to get these updated. It would be nice to have a smoother upgrade including all of the previous add-ons but it is nice to find ones that are equivalent or even better such as the case for me.

Either way, find a way to upgrade to FF3 and find comparable or better plugins as the upgrade to FF3 is worth it.

In the main event, Alves looked ripped and bigger than Hughes and it showed as he seemed more powerful in the match. In fact, Hughes looked overmatched in just about every category of this fight. Hughes was scarcely ever able to get Alves to the ground and when it happened, Hughes wasn’t able to punish Alves at all. It was Hughes who looked beaten and battered. After the fight which ended in the second round with running knee into Hughes head, Alves asked Dana White for a title fight during his interview with Joe Rogan. Alves didn’t get down on his knees but he made it clear that was he ready to take on the winner of GSP vs. Fitch.

There were a lot of unhappy fans due to what many considered a premature stoppage in the first round. Vera looked more like his old self landing knees, kicks and punches and working his Muay Thai but ended up getting mounted by Werdum and eating several unanswered punches right before the first round was set to end. Granted, Vera was in an awkward position, however; he was intelligently defending himself in my opinion. He had his hands actively covering up and there were only 15 seconds in the round when referee Dan Miragliotta called an end to the matchup. Vera immediately was distraught and frustrated by the stoppage saying he was fine to fight. The crown in London at the o2 Arena chorussed in boos obviously appalled at the result. Joe Rogan even admitted that he felt the stoppage was premature. The really interesting part about this conclusion was the fact that Miragliotta officiated the Kimbo Slice vs James Thompson fight where Thompson had Slice mounted in the second round for well over a minute and threw over 70 unanswered punches and elbows yet Miragliotta allowed that fight to continue. This seems incredibly inconsistent. It’s very unfortunate for Vera as he looked quite good in this performance and this fight was meant to get him back on track, but instead, this will take him farther away from the title shot he wants. Perhaps it’s a good time to move to light heavyweight? The main thing is that the heavyweight division is somewhat weak with Arlovski, Sylvia and Couture gone which may keep Vera in that class.

The only other fight I want to comment on is Michael "The Count" Bisping vs Jason Day. Bisping moved down to middleweight and fought Charles McCarthy (Captain Miserable as some call him) and sent him into retirement at a relatively young age of 27. This was Bispings second time out at middleweight and he took on Jason Day who looked great in his first UFC appearance, dismantling the very skilled Alan "The Talent" Belcher. With that said, Bisping looked to be in great shape, came in with a lot of energy and swarmed Day the entire fight and came out with a dominating first round victory. After seeing this, I would really like to see Rich Franklin vs Michael Bisping. Bisping was very impressive in this victory.

Overall, it wasn’t a favorite card of mine. There were a lot of problems with injuries in terms of the main event so it didn’t end up being the original matchups many were anticipating, but it was fairly entertaining nonetheless. The Vera fight was nothing short of a rip off in my opinion in terms of the premature stoppage. While it is the job of the referee to protect the fighters, these guys train very hard and it is their livelihood on the line when they are competing. It’s a tough job, but it’s important to give a guy a chance to come back in a fight. Dan Miragliotta at times looks like an amateur compared to the likes of Yves Lavigne or even Herb Dean. While Miragliotta may be ‘big’, he is also no ‘big’ John McCarthy.  The UFC needs to sort this guy out and do it fast.

Initially, I will discuss the Tito Ortiz fight with Lyoto Machida in some detail and then make some comments on Tito and his past, present and future. Yes, I have watched the Ortiz / Lyoto fight a few times.

A lot of MMA fans feel that Tito Ortiz is not the fighter he once was. I am not sure I agree with that. Apart from injuries, I believe that Tito Ortiz is not far at all from being the quality of fighter he was when he was champion. The difference we are seeing is that his competition is much better well rounded. Tito surely has trained submissions (as we saw during the Lyoto fight) but I am not sure I have seen much of anything else in terms of refining his skills. I haven’t seen any improvement in his standup over the years. The other thing one has to wonder is whether Tito training himself with his usual cohorts is a good idea or not. The best fighters tend to move from one camp to another over the years to refine their skills in myriad categories. I can’t recall Tito ever doing such a thing.

Was Lyoto elusive or did he run? There seems to be a stark contrast between fans who differ on this topic. Fans are really passionate and are staunch in their opinions on whether Lyoto found intelligently or whether he ran away from Ortiz. For what it’s worth, it was a bit of both. There is merit to Lyoto avoiding Tito’s aggression in the cage as an intelligent strategy. After all, counter punching is the very thing that wins fights for Chuck Liddell. Having said that, the problem with Machida doing this is that he doesn’t have that impending doom factor of a Liddell or Anderson Silva where we are anticipating the unavoidable dismantling by the elusive counter puncher. Tito Ortiz came into this game as an alternate originally and was able to ride the wave through being a champion for several years and one of the most recognizable faces in all of MMA. Ortiz knows how to hype his fights and he draws fans to pay per views and events.  Let me put it this way: I bought this PPV in HD and it cost me $54.99. If Tito Ortiz wasn’t fighting on the card, I probably wouldn’t have splurged. As much as I can respect Machida, I would not be too excited to see him fight again. I think he has great potential, but he needs to add a lot of aggression to his game. He needs to be elusive when necessary, but most importantly, aggressive as well whenever possible.

What happens to Tito now? In the post fight interview, Ortiz did say that he hasn’t decided on what he is doing after the fight. I do not think Ortiz will be back with the UFC and while I am a fan of Ortiz and believe he can bring in a lot of fans and money to the box office, I do not believe the UFC is a good venue for him anymore. Likewise, I do not believe that the UFC would be smart to continue to invest in Ortiz. Ortiz has not done anything spectacular in terms of wins over the past fews years with the exception of the Shamrock rivalry. I believe Ortiz would be much more successful fighting in another company where he would be able to showcase his showmanship and fighting skills against opponents that he would be more likely to dominate. The UFC has become a lot about who wins the fight regardless of style or entertainment value and while there is nothing wrong with that and I don’t say that as a criticism although it does result in some boring fights sometimes, it is not a good place for Ortiz to be.

Ortiz has a lot of stuff on his plate. He is doing a book tour and continues the Punishment clothing line as well as mentioned getting back into training with a group of people. Ortiz may mourn his legacy in the UFC but he eventually will be too busy to think about due to other exciting future ventures.

Good luck Tito. Thanks for all of those years you gave the fans and I personally look forward to seeing more of the Huntington Beach Bad boy!

This stance of ensuring users’ sentiments were slated as secondary irritated many users. It bothered people enough that they sought out a way to fix this problem themselves. There was a plugin developed and another hack to get the resizing text box function to work again. Funpidgin incorporates the text box resizing plugin as an option for the user. This would have been incredibly easy for the Pidgin developers to do as well, however; it seems that they took a philosophical hardline and decided not to included as they considered their new predictive automatically resizing text box to be more advanced. Some users felt that this sentiment sent a strong ‘we know what is better for you than you do’ message, driving them to make negative comments and move away from Pidgin software.

The Funpidin developers have promised to listen to the users and take their requests seriously. Luckily because we are dealing with open source, we have this option for all users.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. I made my choice. I am chatting with friends using Funpidgin right now. I probably will never use the original Pidgin ever again.

For anyone that cares to improve or concur, I am doing a quick spelling lesson for everyone. I am not sure if it is my heightened awareness of spelling blunders or if the general inadequacy is as apparent as it seems. Anyway, believe it or not, the following basic spelling errors / improper usage of words are very common mistakes. Yes, I notice this on official documentation, not just internet colloquial speak. I will state that I am far from perfect in grammar and spelling, but c’mon, these are things that a 3rd grader should know. I am going to use the most basic examples for each situation so that it is easier to understand. I know that throwing official dictionary rules and jargon may not be very effective.

Then and Than:
Then – used to relate to time. IE – “I went shopping and then decided to get something to eat.”
Than – used to compare something IE – “My spelling abilities are better than yours.”

Your and You’re:
You’re – contraction of ‘You are’. IE – “You’re funny”. Keep in mind, if you can substitute You Are for your usage of You’re, then you have it right.
Your – indicating possession IE – “Your inability to spell basic words is not flattering.”

Their, There and They’re:
Their – indicating possession IE – “The party is at their house.”
There – usually pertaining to a place. IE – “The party is over there.”
They’re – contraction of ‘they are. IE – “They’re going to the party.”

The expression “a lot”. This is two words! Use a space.

When people intend to use have as a contraction but it ends up being a separate word somehow:

Could’ve somehow turns into Could of?
Should’ve somehow turns into Should of?
Would’ve somehow turns into Would of?

You get the idea.

Regardless. How much more regardless can something be? I’ve seen enough of “irregardless.” If you use the term “irregardless”, why not go all out and say (hyphens used for effect) anti-mis-un-dis-ir-regardless? I can’t imagine anything getting any more regardless than that.

I will add more examples as I think of them. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all write as accurately as third graders?

Note – this method does not work with Firefox 3 unfortunately. I will do a new post if I find a method that will work for Firefox 3. The following instructions are for Firefox 2 only.

*************** Windows Instructions ***************

1. Close Firefox
2. Browse to c:\documents and settings\”Your Username”\Application Data\Mozilla\”Something”.Default User(Mine was zmmuzhth.Default User)\chrome
3. Open up the userChrome-example.css file and copy and paste this at the very bottom of the document:

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar */
#bookmarks-ptf {display:block}
#bookmarks-ptf toolbarseparator {display:inline}

4. Rename userChrome-example.css to userChrome.css

Once this is done, you should be able to see more of your bookmark toolbar items.

For myself, I had to navigate to a different directory as I use Linux. Here are the slightly modified instructions:

****************** Linux Instructions *****************

1. Close Firefox (optional)
2. Browse to /home/”Your Username”/.mozilla/firefox/”Something”.Default User/chrome/
3. Open up the userChrome-example.css file and copy and paste this at the very bottom of the document:

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar */
#bookmarks-ptf {display:block}
#bookmarks-ptf toolbarseparator {display:inline}

4. Save userChrome-example.css under the filename userChrome.css
5. If you didn’t close Firefox in step 1, you may need to restart it to see the effects.

Once this is done, you should be able to add more bookmarks to your toolbar and more rows should appear as needed.

I’ve heard about some people complaining that not much happens in the first hour or so. This did not bother me at all in terms of the lack of seizure inducing action as was expected by critics expecting constant flashing on the screen. What those viewers missed was the significance of the depiction of a world post apocalypse and Smith’s incidents of paranoia and hallucinatory experiences. This was fairly interesting to me and held my attention.

Where “I Am Legend” lost me was on two major errors. The first was the shots of Will Smith doing shirtless chin ups while obviously showing his ripped physique. While impressive, this had absolutely nothing to do with the storyline and furthermore, did not fit his casual speaking character which also discredited him as a ‘doctor’. Sadly, this just appeared to be an opportunity for Smith to capitalize on showing off his new physique which made this all the more Hollywood and interfered with buying into the character and plot.

Secondly, regardless of your orientation to organized religion, the female character introduced later in the movie who made references to the almighty, further insulted the integrity of the film by uttering such a cliche.

The only other criticism I’ve heard was in reference to the infected specimens that they were not terrifying or mutated enough. This was not a requirement for me and anyone who would criticize this film for that reason should probably go home and watch any of the Resident Evil series instead.

While “I Am Legend” made a couple of major errors, it was not without merit. As mentioned, the scenic depictions of the post apocalyptic earth were interesting as well as the routines established by Smith’s character “Dr. Robert Neville”. While, showing a nice set of abs and using a cliche segue to bring about an ending may help draw attention from the unobservant masses, it will do nothing for properly conscious movie goers.

One thing I find as I get older is that I am increasingly more selective with how I allocate my ‘free time’. I simply don’t have 2 and a half hours to donate to a viewing. There are many other priorities that take precedence. I personally would not feel ripped off at all if flicks were reverted to 90 minutes or so and the epic say around 2 hours. It seems that the status quo these days is 2 hours for your average film and close to 3 hours for the qualified epics. It’s about the experience and to invest 90 minutes of time into something and be satisfied with the experience and be able to still accomplish other tasks in your day is a good thing.

The reasons why I would consider paying for Hitman consist of the fact that it is approximately 90 minutes so even if I don’t really enjoy myself, I don’t need to be too bitter about 2.5 hours of my life that is not refundable. I also have a personal interest in the film as well, having played the Hitman video game so it would be interesting to see how it is portrayed on the big screen.

Picking the right time of day is important. With the advent of home theater, it may be better to just wait for the DVD and watch it at home in your own comfort. This is why I tend to go after it has been out for a few weeks and pick an odd time where the theater is bound to be scarce.  This helps to reduce the banal nattering and chatter from the local vagrants

It is faster, but it was a recent install so I have further testing to do to see how much faster it is. I have it quite optimized though running Arch Linux with a custom 64 bit kernel on their 64 bit OS. I am running Gnome on the desktop and have beryl enabled which runs seamlessly. Switching workspaces appears better than instantaneous if there is such a thing.

The installation went smoothly other than one thing which was my board reverting back to using the onboard video somehow. Also, I have a PCI-e Nvidia card in this box which I had to remove after setting up the bios as my 22″ LCD didn’t seem to detect the signal from the DVI connection. So, I powered off and removed the PCI-e card, connected to the onboard vga port and powered on, changed the bios setting, powered the system off, then re-inserted the PCI-e card, plugged the DVI cable into the PCI-e card, then powered back on and it worked. It was a bit of a hassle and unexpected, but I figured it out.

Linux VS. Windows…

Linux — Prior to installing the new CPU, I recompiled my Linux kernel with the latest version, ensuring I had the correct options for the new CPU in place and downloaded the new Nvidia driver so it was ready to install when I booted back into my system. My kernel booted up fine and I was able to install the Nvidia driver without issue. I would say this took about 10 minutes including the kernel compile and driver install. (The Ubuntu 64 and FC7 64 installs on the same box booted up as if nothing was changed due to using a stock kernel and accompanying Nvidia driver distro package).

Windows — It boots up to the login screen (does not show my username) and just sits there. It will more than likely require a reinstall or I may just ditch it altogether as it is only on that machine should I need to do work for a customer who uses proprietary software. Thanks Microsoft, what versatility!

I will define Distro Ditching as the abandonment of one’s choice of distro on a main machine or computer that is used regularly (not a test box) where the switching may be considered either chronic or due to seemingly minor reasons.

So, now that I’ve qualified the expression, let me give some more information. First, I would never criticize someone for trying out a new operating system as this has many possible benefits (of course depending on the user). These benefits include learning new processes and understanding a different system as well as being able to troubleshoot in a variety of operating systems. This can really help one get a better understanding of how computers work under the hood on both a software and hardware level.  Also, the exposure to many variances gives someone more of an opportunity to grasp a preference for a specific style of OS.

What are some examples of Distro Ditching? I specifically called it Distro Ditching because of the nature or conditions under which the change takes place. There have been circumstances for various Linux users where they have found through trying a different distro that one satisfies their needs more than another. I experienced this myself several years ago while trying out a plethora of distros. I can remember changing from SuSE to Gentoo to Red Hat and at the onset of Fedora, I switched to Arch. None of these choices were on a whim or without much thought even though I was a new user. Each suited my needs better each time I changed. The testament to that is my use of Arch Linux as my primary distro on several machines for around 3 years now.

It seemed to me, that it was normal to go through the ritual of learning this different OS and facing the unsuspected belittling on certain nasty IRC chats and forum members and if you survived such rite of passage, you came out on the other side only the wiser. There appeared to be a sense of branding in this experience that was worthwhile.

Lately, this rite of passage appears to be lost. I am not saying that people do not encounter struggles with learning a new OS, only that perhaps the overall reaction may be different. People are too fast to give up and throw in the towel. This may mean switching back to Windows or Mac or it could mean wiping off that hard drive only to try a different version of Linux that may or may not magically satisfy all computer needs.

Where does this all or nothing mentality come from? It could be a derivative of the distros getting more automated so users have come to expect the transition to require less adjustment. This could be taken as a compliment I suppose. Perhaps it is a perpetual motion machine sharing the option to say uncle early as normalcy. Of course the risk in this is cheating themselves of the learning experience. There was a time (and it is still my opinion) that any Linux user after a short period of time needs to learn to compile his own kernel as this is a fundamental aspect of the inherent value of using Linux.

Fast food distro society? Are people less patient in the Linux world overall lately? While strides have been taken to make processes (installations, adding packages, configurations etc) easier, it doesn’t mean that the value of learning what is underneath is gone. Typically, it is human nature to only put as much energy as is required into a task.

So what? The risk is that anyone who can’t be bothered to learn what’s under the hood will cheat themselves of the ability to troubleshoot their choice of OS. Linux will give you logical error messages most times that can point you in the right direction of providing a fix should it arise, unlike other OS’s that give useless error messages, blue colorized screens that are not usable or useful or just do nothing at all in return except not provide the requested result.

Old school? Yeah, I can admit I am a bit old school, although I began using Linux only about 4 or 5 years ago. I consider the learning experience, while frustrating at times, the most valuable experience in terms of computers that one could endure.

The journey or the destination? Those fast food OS types get to experience plenty of destinations due to the vast array of Linux flavors. The unfortunate part is because of the tendency to participate in Distro Ditching, the destination is often short-lived and under appreciated.

Why did I change hosts? My former host was having issues with stability and decided to discontinue the service. This came right out of the blue and it was not very well timed, but these things tend to happen in this manner.

What research did I do? I looked up many websites where there were ratings and such and asked lots of friends and some people I didn’t know too well for their opinions. I didn’t have much time, so I tried to make the most of it and take in as much information as possible. I found that there was quite a range of pricing for hosting.

One alternative was to use a dedicated server which runs about $100 monthly. This is a really nice solution, but the drawback other than price is diskspace. If a company dedicates and entire box to you, they are likely not going to put a large hard drive in it. There are upgrades available but they are very costly, upping your monthly costs by $20-$100 depending on the amount of space you want. Also, ram upgrades are very expensive too and these are monthly charges.

Probably the most popular hosts for regular end users are shared. The least expensive and most popular of these boast very large disk space up to 350G and a monthly transfer rate of 3500GB. This is an incredible amount of space that most people will never use. I actually called 3 places: Bluehost, Host Monster and Lunar Pages. The result of calling Lunar Pages are still somewhat unknown because I couldn’t really understand the sales agent. I discovered that Bluehost and Host Monster were owned by the same company. The funny thing was that I even got the same guy on the phone when I called the second one.

I first called Bluehost and spoke to “Joel” in sales. Maybe because I work in sales and customer service and used to supervise at a call center, I have higher standards but talking to Joel was a great experience in helping me decide not to go with Bluehost. He seemed completely disinterested in getting my business and if I wasn’t speaking, there was totally dead air. I was shocked that this kind of person was in “sales”. When he answered the phone when I called Host Monster , I did the mature thing and hung up. Although I was initially excited at the amount of space and decent pricing of these companies, I was quickly disappointed and crossed them off my list of prospective new hosts.

One of the things I had liked about my previous host was that it was a smaller business and if I needed anything, I could talk directly to him. He had been quite helpful in getting things up and running for me. I really thought a lot about which host to choose and examined all of the numbers closely.

I had viewed the hosting on Godaddy’s site not very long ago and I found that the pricing was a bit high considering the amount of bandwidth and space they allotted. I decided to give a quick visit again. This time I noticed that they had vastly increased the space for their top 2 tier accounts of the 3. The most basic – Economy offered 5GB space with 250GB monthly transfer usage for $3.99 which the next step at Deluxe offered 100GB space with 1,000GB transfer space for $6.99. The Premium offered 500GB space and 2,000GB transfer for $14.99. Previously I had been using around 1.2B of space with around 10-15GB of monthly transfer so the Economy package probably would have worked, but I ended up deciding on the Deluxe because knowing that I have the extra space, I will think of ways to use more I’m sure.

How was the setup? I processed the account online and had it all set up in terms of hosting basics the same night. I was able to get ftp access fairly quickly. I uploaded all of my files overnight and then returned to the work in the morning. I ended up getting everything done the same day. The tedious part was creating the sql databases again on the server and then importing the ones from the previous site. Godaddy makes this fairly easy though with their intuitive tools. Once this was done, I had to edit my corresponding text files that contained the proper information for the server and such and I was done.

Why Godaddy? Apart from them improving their bandwidth allotment, I have used them for my domains for several years and never had an issue. I’ve never heard anyone complain about them. I found that some of the other companies would advertise deals on their front page and then once you got in deeper, they would say this only applies to account sign ups for 1 year. Godaddy is monthly but there are options to purchase longer plans with discounts. With my domain and hosting both with the same company, I can have everything on one bill as well.

Performance? It’s still early, but I find Godaddy every bit as fast as my last host which is around 600-750 kb/s for downloading. The only downside is that I lost some of the more recent posts on the forum, but that had nothing to do with the host.

It wasn’t my favorite way to spend a weekend as I really set my free time at a premium because I am usually so exhausted during the week from working long hours. I am glad that it’s done and I don’t think Godaddy is going anywhere anytime soon so the idea of switching hosts likely won’t come up for a long time.

Anyway, back to the hard drive. I managed to pick up a brand new Samsung 100GB drive at 5400rpm for $120 Canadian. This was a reasonable price. This upgrade was justifiable for a few reasons: 1 – it was a huge upgrade in a space going from a 20 to a 100 which meant that I could put a lot more of my music on it and assorted files and not worry about running out of space, 2- it would enable a more reasonable opportunity to multiboot on this portable device, 3 – a speed increase in the sense that my previous drive was only spinning at 4200 rpm. It has worked out great overall and I would recommend it to anyone wanting more space. The hard drives are universal so as long as you get sata or pata that is compatible with your laptop, then the rest is easy. My hard drive was very easy to remove and replace. Although I did end up reinstalling Linux, it was very easy to backup my original data across the network and then copy it back after the reinstall. I do notice a difference in speed.

For my leftover 20GB previous drive, I went out and picked up a 2.5″ external casing which is very small and can fit into most jacket pockets. This was around $20 Canadian. Now I can use this drive as a portable device if I like. When I decide to get a new laptop, I can also transfer this 100GB to it down the road if I want so the investment is something that can be relatively long lasting.

I first started using Linux about 4 or 5 years ago and the first distro I tried was SuSE which was freshly around version 8 at the time. I won’t get into my distro experience which includes installation of over 50 distinct versions, but I can say that I have encountered my fair share of package management systems. While it is true that ‘dependency hell’ was a valid term at one time, referring to virtually any distro as suffering from a current state of dependency hell is absolutely unfounded and downright foolish. This is especially true Fedora Core 5/6 which uses RPMs.

Let’s backtrack for a few moments here and talk about package management and how it works. The truth is that there are several different types of package extensions and each version of Linux makes its choice of which one to endorse. Sometimes this means creating its own entirely from scratch and sometimes it means ‘borrowing’ someone else’s and using it (as long it complies with the GPL). With the exception of source based distributions which compile each package from its source code, each version of Linux uses a compressed package containing files that when installed for lac of better terms, extract into their predestined directories. The installation is really that simple. It’s in how you come to obtain the packages that causes the confusion. This means that the fact that one distro uses RPM verses PKG or DEB makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. It is in how the package lists are generated, which packages are available on the selected server and how well maintained those servers are that makes all the difference.

RPM got a bad name simply because it was the package of choice of Red Hat which years ago had a poorly maintained package management system. People directed the term “dependency hell” at RPMs simply because of its association. In recent years, Red Hat and the community based extension of itself referred to as Fedora have evolved vastly, improving their repositories to include all required packages needed by installation candidates. I never hear about missing packages or missing dependencies with Fedora.

All that is needed, if you so choose, is to enable a couple of extra repos to get specialized packages if they are not available on the main server. So, you say this is still a pain to have to do this and therefore it is dependency hell? Well, Ubuntu does the same thing and it uses DEBs as their package set and it seems to work the exact same way and no one refers to Ubuntu or Debian based distros as suffering from ‘dependency hell’. Again, saying anything relating to Fedora and tying in the term dependency hell is simply guilt by association and this is an antiquated tradition as it hasn’t even been close to being a problem for several years.

My disclaimer is that I have no vested interest in Fedora Core itself. While I do think it has improved vastly over the years and it is a fairly robust Linux distro these days, I do not use it as a main distro. My distro of choice is Arch Linux. I am no fanboy, I tell it like it is. People can use what they want and what suits their needs. For me, that is Arch. I have installed Ubuntu on several boxes for people who want to try out a distro and even Arch in a few cases. The bottom line is to be able to describe the advantages and disadvantages of different distros based on what the user needs, not based on what you may have heard as a trendy expression. There are plenty of ways to improve Linux by offering concrete and useful suggestions instead of throwing out blanket expressions that don’t even apply to today’s current Linux userbase. Dependency hell is a thing of the past, leave it there, let it die and move forward.

• Pick a decent format – my preference is in this order > AVI, MPG/MPEG, MOV and WMV are equally bad last resorts, ASF (only if you are stuck and have no alternative). Make sure your file is playable in common media applications.
• Make sure it is viewable (do not upload anything too pixelated or with terrible audio quality
• Ensure the size is relative to its purpose (a quick intro should not take too long to download or cache, alternatively, something that depends on high quality should not be compressed too much
• It should be somewhat polished relative to its intention. If you want a lot of people to be able to watch it, make sure it is fairly clean and looks and sounds good.

I will give you the run down of the video I was completely disgusted to see even uploaded now. It was encoded into 4 different nsv files (yes –> Nullsoft video – this means you need to install Winamp in Windows and if you are using Linux – mplayer may work, with Mac I am not sure what would work – VLC would be worth a shot). Terrible choice of format overall. Secondly, the file was split into 4 files totally unnecessarily and it was recommended that you put them all in your playlist and make sure that shuffle is not on so they wouldn’t play in the right order. On top of this hassle, the video and audio itself was atrocious. I have never in my life seen such poor video uploaded so that there is so much pixelation I can barely even make out what is happening on the screen. When you can actually witness the person alt-tabbing back to their desktop to check their browser mid stream, this is a really bad sign. I couldn’t even watch it. I know some people will cry and say that if you don’t want to watch it, then just don’t watch it, but that is missing the point here. This example is like spam in email, if you have absolutely no clue about how to make a good video, don’t bother ever uploading it. Even if people wanted to watch your content, if it’s that horrible, it will only make them bitter and bring your reputation down. Here are some quotes from others to support my claim:

• “What a waste of time! Why would you waste YOUR time putting up garbage like this??”
• “Sorry to the uploader But this is really bad”
• “the process is ridiculously time consuming”
• “Thanx but no thanx, stick to what works”
• “Seriously this is terrible”
• “This is awful “

Just to mention a few. So, please take these things into consideration in the future for anyone who does video on the web!

• Long Fade outs — we know what it’s going to sound like and how you will say those same words for the next 3 minutes, so please spare us the white noise and just do a quick fade out, or better yet, have a good ending that punctuates the song.
• Singing about nursery rhymes or making childhood references that should be relegated to subject matter that actually warrants it.
• Repeating the same word or phrase more than 3 times consecutively without offering even a vocal change to it. Seriously, most people don’t have the attention span for this.
• Song titles with the word “song” in the title — we know it’s a song, there’s no need to remind us. It would be equivalent to labelling everything edible at the grocery store with “food” after the item’s name. This is unnecessarily redundant and unimaginative – especially for an “artist”.

I would like to thank the makers of Audacity which I commonly use to edit out those irritating long fade outs to make a decent song with extraneous banality added into a decent song again.

Recently, I was doing some late night tech work (after finishing my day job. I ended up finishing at around 4:30AM and typically my routine is to finish my regular job around 11pm or a bit after if I end up staying late and then go to the gym to work out and then home to eat what I refer to as my supper because that’s how my schedule works. I will admit, it is a bit unconventional compared to the daywalker rat race of shuffling through train stations and driving in stop and go, but somehow I am able to get through an existance without such experiences. I hadn’t eaten anything after leaving at 11PM so by the time 4:30AM came around I was quite hungry. I knew my choices would be limited but even with that pretext, I still ended up disappointed. So, let’s review my choices at this hour – either I go to the grocery store and pick up something I can make myself or I can go to McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s. Now, although visiting Tim Horton’s has become some kind of Canadian fixation, the idea, smell or taste of anything coffee related makes my stomach turn. Incredulous? The next time you are standing next to someone with a cup of coffee, close your eyes and imagine someone just had a bowel movement there – the two odors are interchangeable. And, I have to say, I’ve never been impressed with Tim Horton’s food, I have almost always found it unsatisfying. So, one down, two to go. Next up, the grocery store – I didn’t feel like actually making anything and almost anything else you can get from a grocery store that is premade isn’t very good anyway. To add to those factors, the idea of getting out of my car and traversing a 6000 square foot kingdom of food didn’t really sound appealing at 4:30AM. So, off to McDonald’s. Surely I can get something chicken oriented or as close to the actual bird as they can get (everyone loves biting into the ever popular “McChicken” that most times actually looks gray or black on the inside and unfortunately this is not because it is burned). So, I pull up and all I see are eggs and english muffins. So I inquire on the obligatory mumble machine and sure enough, they suddenly have contracted acute amnesia and completely forgotten to make anything else other than breakfast! This is one of the downfalls of larger establishments – they have to play by the rules all time. If it were a locally owned family restaurant, it would have been no problem to throw on a burger or prepare something with real chicken. So I muttered ‘nevermind’ into the refurbished walkie talkie and was on my way back home. At least I didn’t give them my money because conglomerates only understand this as a sign of approval. Very few places actually customer’s opinions. All that matters is whether you buy from their establishment. Spending is the direct and only litmus test of customer satisfaction for most places these days.

I know there are arguments against this late night school of thought, but it gets to be the chicken or the egg routine all over again doesn’t it? Places aren’t open late at night because they don’t get enough customers but customers don’t go there because they aren’t open. I would have loved a Quiznos sub or a pita from one of my favorite pita places. As it turned out, I went home and puncuated the whole escapade with some irony by having oatmeal and then going to bed.

Something I have been contemplating for quite a while is getting rid of my home phone (old school touch tone, not voip). I have also had a cell phone for several years at this point (going on 7 years including one number change due to changing service providers). There are several reasons why getting rid of this roughly $30 per month expense would be a good idea.

PROS

* Save money each month and as a bonus, I can justify adding more features to the cell if I like
* This line is almost never used
* Cell phones by default offer a great deal more features and technology
* Cell phones offer the convenience of mobility
* All calls can be centralized to one device
* Cell phones scarcely get telemarketer calls
* Cell phones tend not to have listed numbers unlike generic phone book listings (to get an unlisted number requires a fee with the local phone company)
* There are outrageous fees to changing numbers or setting up lines if one moves

Of course, there are always drawbacks, but I can only think of a few:

CONS

* I’ve had this same home number for 12 years so it is the one registered with anyone who has asked for a phone number
* Long distance charges tend to be less expensive by default (a special service may be used with cell phones perhaps to enable a discount)
* The cell phone number could be only given out to people you would be willing to take calls from as a secondary line, where if only one line is used then it could mean that even people or businesses you would rather not hear from may still call (different ring styles for groups of people may help distinguish)
* Cell phones sometimes can be regarded as less reliable as home phones if there are issues with the battery or the cell phone provider

I have been doing an experiment for the last month or two to see what it would be like not to use the home phone at all. I wanted to see if my monthly cell phone bill would increase exponentially. The only thing I found which is completely unrelated is that my text messaging increased. I ended up adding more texting to my plan. What it comes down to is the nagging feeling that once I would call and cancel then suddenly something would occur to me that hadn’t before and I would regret such a cancellation. In two months I haven’t been able to find any monumental reasons to keep the line. What I may end up doing is calling the home phone provider to see if they have any other options other than a cancellation. To be continued…

After many long years, I finally get to experience what everyone is going on about! Last week, my throat felt rather sore and it was painful to swallow but I had been drinking a great deal of pop (soda to my U.S. friends). I was able to just bear with it and then when I felt lumps there, I decided it might be good to get it checked out. Of course, on a Sunday, urgent care clinics are not exactly the most accommodating, however; I did find one location open until 5pm that was completely vacant. I have to admit, that having a throat infection is rather unpleasant but more of an annoyance than anything else. Swallowing no longer causes any pain, however; my throat feels as if someone has taken bootswings at various angles. Checking one’s blindspot when driving is somewhat uncomfortable. Overall, the pain really isn’t that bad and I get these fancy pills to take until they are finished (yes, I was reminded to take them until they are gone, even if the symptoms disappear). I decided to look up some information on sore throats which is posted below and taken from this site:

“Allergy: The same pollens and molds that irritate the nose when they are inhaled also may irritate the throat. Cat and dog danders and house dust are common causes of sore throats for people with allergies to them.

Irritation: During the cold winter months, dry heat may create a recurring, mild sore throat with a parched feeling, especially in the mornings. This often responds to humidification of bedroom air and increased liquid intake. Patients with a chronic stuffy nose, causing mouth breathing, also suffer with a dry throat. They need examination and treatment of the nose.

Pollutants and chemicals in the air can irritate the nose and throat, but the most common air pollutant is tobacco smoke. Other irritants include smokeless tobacco, alcoholic beverages, and spicy foods.

A person who strains his or her voice (yelling at a sports event, for example) gets a sore throat not only from muscle strain but also from the rough treatment of his or her throat membranes.

Reflux: An occasional cause of morning sore throat is regurgitation of stomach acids up into the back of the throat. To avoid reflux, tilt your bedframe so that the head is elevated four- to six-inches higher than the foot of the bed. You might find antacids helpful. You should also avoid eating within three hours of bedtime, and eliminate caffeine and alcohol. If these tips fail, see your doctor.

Tumors: Tumors of the throat, tongue, and larynx (voice box) are usually (but not always) associated with long-time use of tobacco and alcohol. Sore throat and difficulty swallowing, sometimes with pain radiating to the ear, may be symptoms of such a tumor. More often the sore throat is so mild or so chronic that it is hardly noticed. Other important symptoms include hoarseness, a lump in the neck, unexplained weight loss, and/or spitting up blood in the saliva or phlegm.

When Should I See a Doctor For A Sore Throat?

Whenever a sore throat is severe, persists longer than the usual five- to seven- day duration of a cold or flu, and is not associated with an avoidable allergy or irritation, you should seek medical attention. The following signs and symptoms should alert you to see your physician:

* Severe and prolonged sore throat
* Difficulty breathing
* Difficulty swallowing
* Difficulty opening the mouth
* Joint pain
* Earache
* Rash
* Fever (over 101°)
* Blood in saliva or phlegm
* Frequently recurring sore throat
* Lump in neck
* Hoarseness lasting over two weeks

When Should I Take Antibiotics For A Sore Throat?

Antibiotics are drugs that kill or impair bacteria. Penicillin or erythromycin (well-known antibiotics) are prescribed when the physician suspects streptococcal or another bacterial infection that responds to them. However, a number of bacterial throat infections require other antibiotics instead. Antibiotics do not cure viral infections, but viruses do lower the patient’s resistance to bacterial infections. When such a combined infection occurs, antibiotics may be recommended. When an antibiotic is prescribed, it should be taken as the physician directs for the full course (usually 10 days). Otherwise the infection will probably be suppressed rather than eliminated, and it can return. Some children will experience recurrent infection despite antibiotic treatment. When some of these are strep infections or are severe, your child may require a tonsillectomy.

Should Other Family Members be Treated or Cultured?

When a strep test is positive, many experts recommend treatment or culturing of other family members. Practice good sanitary habits; avoid close physical contact; and sharing of napkins, towels, and utensils with the infected person. Handwashing makes good sense.

What If My Throat Culture Is Negative?

A strep culture tests only for the presence of streptococcal infections. Many other infections, both bacterial and viral, will yield negative cultures and sometimes so does a streptococcal infection. Therefore, when your culture is negative, your physician will base his/her decision for treatment on the severity of your symptoms and the appearance of your throat on examination.

How Can I Treat My Sore Throat?

A mild sore throat associated with cold or flu symptoms can be made more comfortable with the following remedies:

* Increase your liquid intake.
* Warm tea with honey is a favorite home remedy.
* Use a steamer or humidifier in your bedroom.
* Gargle with warm salt water several times daily: ¼ tsp. salt to ½ cup water.
* Take over-the-counter pain relievers such as acetaminophen (Tylenol Sore Throat®, Tempra®) or ibuprofen (Motrin IB®, Advil®).”

As I do not smoke, I still suspect mine was caused from an unusually excessive intake of pop and incidently, some Crown Royal may have slipped into some of those glasses.

Alright, so here’s my take… My roommate decided that because she enjoyed this book so much that she would pass it on for me to read. So I started it and the first thing I noticed was the big writing and extremely short chapters. This book to me is an overall great marketing tool which adheres to the following rules:

1 – write a book that is easy enough for a 5 year old to understand so it reaches the largest audience possible

2 – include challenging steadfast religious principles because that will really get attention and grind some gears

3 – use big big writing so even the myopic can easily follow the story

4 – make a movie and a video game to cash in the 15 minutes of fame as much as possible

These are just the main categories that come to mind now. Anyway, apart from the juvenile style, I was willing to give this propaganda and water cooler time waster a fair shake so I kept reading. I found myself waiting and waiting until I cared about that was going on such as the plot, the characters, the religious challenges, the codes that none of the bumbling cretins (my french tribute) could uncover such as deciphering poorly written backwards handwriting or understanding that one of the codewords is a small variant of the name of arguablly the main character in the entire book – this ’secret’ I figured out about 100 pages before it was revealed and all this without a degree in cryptography! The other obvious puzzle was Teabing as the teacher – this book only has a limited number of characters and the idea of introducing someone new would surely have proven overwhelming for the minds for which this scholastic masterpiece was designed. Nonetheless, I dredged on. I’ll skip the mid section of 150 pages as they could have been condensced immensely. I will get right to the ending… Now, it’s one thing for me to get to the end and there to be a legitimate catharsis relating to art or religion, neither of which would have piqued my interest – I could have dealt with this, knowing it was simply the subject matter, however; to have the meandering climax gurgle to an ending akin a grade 7 story where “and it was all a dream!” was a moderately creative conclusion was what was more disappointing. To have an entire 450 page novel end on a wafer on an idea that what was pre-occupying many affluent members of different communities and regions was downright insulting. The consolation prize of Sophie being a direct descendent of Jesus Christ was such an afterthought at that point for 2 reasons: 1 – it was deemed as impossible only due to a different last name earlier on the book which is a dead givaway that it must be true (we all know how easy it is to change one’s name, hell, one guy changed his name to a symbol!) and 2 – the fixation on the Holy Grail took such precedence that anyone who was even interested in the other plot was pulled away from it so many times, they would dismiss its significance.
And yes, I will probably watch the movie – why? Naturally because Ian McKellen is in it of course!

I also tested out videos and they do display in widescreen going from end to end. I have yet to try out any games. Token pic below:

Azureus Information on Ports

Explaining Port Selection

One of the main points is that ports 6881-6999 are now considered to be blacklisted. I know this is old news, but since I hadn’t looked into it in a while, I thought I would post it here for those that did not know. Using ports between 49152 – 65535 is now recommended. You only need to put one port in your configuration as opposed to the range before. Apparently this is because some ISP’s and sites are now blacklisting these ports because they were commonly used to send traffic. Azureus goes as far as to say that you should change the port you have set up every once in a while so that your ISP doesn’t block the one you had previously chosen.
Nonetheless, things could be better speed wise considering I have a 5mb line and can generally pulls files in at over 600 kb/s when not restricted by something other than my ISP. I am going to continue to work on trying to get better speeds. It was somewhat refreshing to see many of my torrents actually finish downloading this weekend and I had no issues with my entire network crapping out as I had before so it appears I am closer to a proper solution.

Cell phone saga… I have the Motorola V551 which overall is a great phone with great features but I am finding it is losing its connection too often. I will be talking to someone and then suddenly, while they can still hear me, I cannot hear them. I have an extended warranty on it which helps, however; the last time I took it into an outlet, I was told I could get a software upgrade done on it but it would cost me $40 or so because I just happen to be at a different outlet from where I had purchased which I thought was rather shite. Of course, the phone may need to be replaced which is all well and good as that may result in either a perfectly working phone or possibly an upgrade, but this will mean I will have to add most of any configuration back in manually as I have stored most of it on the phone itself as opposed to the SIM card due to the SIM being very limited in what it can do. I read about some other people complaining about the same thing in terms of losing the connection as well. It seems the firmware upgrade worked for them and otherwise the phone was replaced. It would be nice if Motorola found a way to allow users to do this instead of inconveniencing them by requiring them to take the phone in.

Did another geekfest this weekend with some people. We used the new strategy again which is going to someone’s place and bringing over an xbox with a ton of games, ordering in pizza and drinking as much beer as we want. This offers numerous advantages – stay as late as you want (if host doesn’t mind), save a fair bit of money as you are looking at maybe $20 per person at most for an all you can eat, all you can drink fest. Also, no worries about a kitchen closing in a pub or bar and the scarce selection of food. Invite only works very well too so you don’t need to censor anything said or done. All in all, a much better stategy.

Forum News (not much): Another smiley theme was added.
Home Climate: I’m considering putting back in my air conditioners and at times, wondering why I took them out in the first place. We haven’t had very cold weather this winter in Ontario, Canada at all. Even with no heat on and my window open, there have been nights where I wished I had my a/c back in. It probably won’t be long.

Geek Stuff Online: I checked out Pandora.com today. It seemed really cool at first, but then when they start playing crappy songs, you are only permitted to skip so many in one hour for ‘licensing reasons’. Yet another licensing restriction of some kind that contributes to ruining a good idea. This rather defeats the purpose as you will be subjected to listening to whatver unsavoury tune being played until you are permitted to get to the next song. Overall, it’s a good idea though, just needs to take the restrictions off is all.

To add on to a previous post about the firefox extensions.. I am really enjoying AdBlock but would like to see them add a feature that allows the selection of multiple links at once for a site instead of clicking on each one individually. DownThemAll has worked like a champ and seems to do an excellent job at its intention.

Somewhat complacent with my own computer stuff right now — no reason to upgrade anything, all systems working fine as usual. I would consider getting another 19″ lcd or larger but the res on these things are only 1280×1024 still which is ridiculous considering what current video cards are capable of doing.

Side note — What the hades is going on with Azureus and torrents lately? Speeds have been garbage in most cases and if I leave Azureus running for hours, it crashes my net and I need to reboot my router. Never had this problem before. Maybe it’s the new kernel? Odd though, same config being used. Who knows.

For anyone who wants to use an msn messenger service but doesn’t have a hotmail account, you don’t need to get one, you can use your own!
That’s it for now!