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 free 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?

The web interface is professional in appearance (along with the Community edition, there is an Enterprise version as well) and had many features built right in that were convenient to install. I decided to try it out. As part of this upgrade, I decided to use a gigabit (10/100/1000) network card for my LAN so what I could get better internal speed for copying files within my network. Along with that, I bought a gigabit switch as well. I chose the intel GT nic (many other gigabit cards were not compatible including a Dlink one I tried and a Linksys one that I researched and noticed would not work) and I bought a green friendly Dlink gigabit switch.

The install went fine however, I would have liked to see better instructions along the way. For someone who may not be familiar with setting up a home gateway/router, it could be very confusing. At times, I was unsure what the prompts were asking me and yet I was quite familiar with what I wanted to do. I could imagine some people giving up after not knowing what information to enter. Once done, I removed my previous box which had served me well and replaced it with something a bit more powerful but still not a powerhouse: P3 450 mhz, 256mb ram and a 12 gb HD. I could have used more ram but the motherboard was picky and would accept certain types. I tried several banks but was only successful getting 256 to work. I decided to give it a shot anyway although the recommended amount was 512 for a network of under 5 users. Instantly after plugging everything in and power cycling my cable modem, I was able to visit the Clark Connect internal web interface.

Some of the added features that I can now use are intrusion detection (snort) which IP Cop did have built in but my previous box could not realistically run as well as Windows File Sharing (samba), Web Proxy Filter, Content Filter, Web Server, Mail Server, FTP Server as well as a DHCP server and Name Server. I may not use all of these services, but it would be easy to try them as the built in software retrieval method will download the appropriate packages after simply checking off a corresponding box.

I am still in a testing phase with Clark Connect but so far it has been reliable, fast and easy to use. I like the web interface and the ability to configure things further should I desire. If you have a reasonably decent older box at home that you want to make use of, I would highly recommend trying out Clark Connect and if you want something that can run on older hardware like my P166, then IP Cop could be for you. On older machines, several services may not run well or be practical such as snort intrusion detection. Research the sites and consider replacing that standard big name hardware router if you are having issues with it. You may never use one again as in my case.

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.

The Install – It couldn’t get any easier than the method DreamLinux uses. After booting the Live CD, there is one screen where you can decide on your partitions and whether or not you want to use a bootloader or not and adding a user of your choice. Although it might have been nice to have a bit more configuration settings such as package selection, I tend to find package selection with preconfigured desktop distros to be more of a hassle. The DreamLinux team did a nice job of keeping things simple.

Upgrading – DreamLinux includes the Synaptic package manager. It was very easy to upgrade, although there were a great deal of packages to update after my install. I have yet to figure out how to get my Nvidia drivers installed despite reading forum tips and google searches. The upgrades took a while to complete, but it wasn’t too painful with a decent internet connection…

Sound and Video Menu – I was pleasantly surprised to see some of the applications preinstalled. It is very rare one ever sees either Mplayer or Easytag included with a default install and DreamLinux had both. Also included is Avidemux and Brasero is listed for burning…

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Sound Juicer was included and had a preset for creating mp3 files from cd’s which had not been included in the past. It seems to be a change in Sound Juicer but it’s definitely nice to have an application provided that does not require any intervention to add mp3 profiles as previous versions of Sound Juicer demanded…

Making Things Easier – A few things that are included in DreamLinux that some users may appreciate in terms of getting things running right away include a Gmail check application, The Gimp remodeled with the GimpShop configuration to make it work more like photoshop…

Extras – DreamLinux includes some extra configuration tools aside from its own control center as well. Of note, there is a simple colored folders window that allows you to change your aesthetic preference. Also, there is a built in tool for getting wireless drivers working that may need to load the Windows original using Ndiswrapper. This should be included in any distro that is looking to attract more users to switch to Linux.

In addition, you can see throughout the screenshots that DreamLinux uses AWN (Avant Window Navigator) as the dock at the bottom. I remember using a Gdesklets dock many years ago that I eventually became frustrated with because it broke with every Gdesklets upgrade. I can’t comment at all on AWN but I’ve seen it around more often recently so hopefully it is more stable than I remember Gdesklets.

Issues – The only issue I really ran into was trying to get my Nvidia drivers installed. I eventually deferred to trying the binary driver from the Nvidia site. Even when I tried to get back to a tty, the screen just went multicolored and did not seem to allow it. I also attempted to boot into single user mode and was unsuccessful with that. While compiz is provided with DreamLinux, it isn’t of much use without providing an easy way to get drivers working fully.

Overall – DreamLinux may not be considered unique to some because it uses Debian packages as a backend and this seems to be an ever-growing prevalence among startup distros; however, there are some unique characteristics about DreamLinux that make it worth checking out. DreamLinux uses the testing branch of Debian so it is more up to date than a lot of other distros. This means that you get all of the new features of applications, but there is also a risk of instability that is inherited. DreamLinux also has some cosmetic differences such as sing the AWN and also its own configuration tools and choice of applications. For any Linux enthusiast I would say it is worth installing and testing. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for production machines at least not until I’ve done more testing. There is more documentation and extra screenshots on the DreamLinux documentation page.

]]> http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/28/dreamlinux-3-review/feed/ 2 http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/20/ufc-fight-night-15-results/ http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/2008/09/20/ufc-fight-night-15-results/#comments Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:50:57 +0000 easylinuxguide http://easylinuxguide.com/blog/?p=217 UFC’s Ultimate Fight Night 15 took place in Omaha Nebraska which is the hometown of Houston Alexander who was on the latest card. The main event was Nate Diaz vs Josh Neer, however; the loudest ovation was for Houston Alexander from his hometown crowd as he faced Eric “Red” Schafer. The UFC aired this event on Spike TV for free.

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.

I had recently installed FreeBSD and as in the past, eventually became tired of the ports system so I decided use that disk space to install something else. I had recently been fairly bored with Operating Systems so I was a bit more flexible with trying out something else. In came the Elyssa  0.5 Revision 1 Gnome version of Linux Mint…

The Install

Installation is quite easy, pretty much the same as Ubuntu where you can install it from the live cd boot. It offers custom partitioning which is a must and also adds some extra configurations post install like a small window box for setting up your optional root password and such.

Applications

The usual line up you would expect is here. You get the Gimp for detailed image editing, Brasero for cd/dvd burning, Firefox, Openoffice, Pidgin, Transmission (for torrents), Rhythmbox for audio, Totem for video and a host of other Administrative configuration tools. Linux Mint adds a few extras as well in their control center such as Envy for propritary drivers and also a tool for managing Windows Wireless drivers which I personally think should be default on any distro wanting to gain mass acceptance.

Package Management

Mint comes with its own method of updating but also includes Synaptic which is great to have some variety but could be confusing to newer users who may not know which one to use. I know Ubuntu has both Synaptic and also the Update Manager which are both great tools, but it might be better to combine them into one since they can do some of the same things. Of course its up to the user to decide which is best and choice is always nice, but perhaps having a one time wizard after the install to configure your preference would be a good idea. Having said all that, I’ve had Linux Mint installed for a couple weeks at least and using Synaptic I have noticed that there have not been many updates at all. I will need to look into this more, but I would have thought that there would have been more package updates at least for the applications.

Stability and Performance

Overall, I have found Linux Mint very stable and actually it is faster than I expected. I would definitely say it is faster than Ubuntu even. This was rather surprising to me as I had a preconceived notion that it would be slower if anything since it had some of its own tools added and had a reputation for being more complete out of the box after the install.

Longevity

A lot of times I install distros and then later on, I will install something else over top of it. I don’t plan on doing this with Linux Mint. I am interested in seeing how well it gets maintained, updated and enhanced.

Overall

If you are considering installing a new distro and want something easy with good performance, Linux Mint is definitely worth a look. The only concern I have with it compared to Ubuntu is longevity. I hope it continues to be maintained. Canonical has proven that they are here to stay with offering 5 years of support for each of their LTS versions of Ubuntu. I hope Linux Mint can enjoy the same kind of long term success.

Here is a quick rundown…

The main event was Georges St. Pierre in his first title defense since regaining the welterweight championship from Matt Serra. GSP started off against Fitch very aggressive and did a lot of damage in the first round. Despite all of the talk about Fitch being tough, surely a lot of observers including myself were surprised that Fitch made it out of the first round. Not only did Fitch make it out of the first, he endured 5 full rounds of beatings until GSP was awarded with a unanimous lopsided decision. Fitch commented in a post fight interview saying that GSP was essentially too fast for him and after the first round, he had vision problems which plagued him for the remainder of the onslaught. After the fight, BJ Penn entered the Octagon and seemed extremely eager to set up a rematch between himself and GSP. GSP of course obliged but it will up to the UFC. BJ will need to move up to welterweight as he has done in the past. GSP vs Penn may be one of the biggest draws in UFC history if it comes to fruition.

Similarly, Brock Lesnar was equally dominant over Heath Herring. Lesnar opened the first round with a flying knee and later connected on a punch that sent Herring not only to the ground but head over feet toward the cage. Herring’s vantage point upon his vision returning to normal would have seen Lesnar charging toward the vulnerable Herring. What a sight that must have been even for a veteran of over 40 fights like Herring! Lesnar continued a dominating performance for the duration, focusing on his smothering wrestling scoring a unanimous 30-26 decision. Lesnar could be the answer to the sometimes dull heavyweight division. Lesnar has personality evidenced by his head nodding along with the crowd chanting for him during the battle as well as his excitement of watching his own replays after the fight. Although Lesnar was completely effective in nullifying any offense strategized by Herring, he obviously is very young in his MMA career at 2-1 and needs to work on some techniques. Lesnar had numerous opportunities to put in hooks while on top and never did so. It was quite possible he could have choked out or arm barred Herring but instead Lesnar used his amateur wrestling skills to smother Herring and beat him mercilessly. While this may look intimidating to some MMA competitors watching, Lesnar will need to become more well rounded as surely he is aware and working on.

Kenny Florian vs Roger Huerta was almost a carbon copy of the GSP vs Fitch fight. It was very obvious that Florian was the far more cerebral and technical fighter while Huerta revealed that he was limited to being a brawler. Huerta will have a great future, but needs to learn more technique.

Also on the card:

Demian Maia defeated Jason MacDonald by a choke in the third round.
Tamdan McCrory beat Luke Cummo by unanimous decision in what Joe Rogan called “The Battle of the Geeks”
Cheick Kongo proved too much for Dan Evenson with a TKO victory at 4:55 of the third round.
Rob Emerson disposed of an over aggressive Manny Gamburyan at 12 seconds of the first round with strikes.

check the UFC website for more results.

Overall I went 7 out of 10 on my picks.

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

Hopefully this sells well and BestBuy continue to do this. Apparently 60 days of support and a light booklet come with this edition. More pics can be found here and here.

I am considering buying one if I can find one around here just to offer support.

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.

The first fight was between Brett “The Grim” Rogers and Jon Murphy. This fight took only 61 seconds before Murphy was caught with a haymaker and the fight was stopped. Rogers is on a knockout win streak and seems poised for a shot at Kimbo Slice.

Smokin Joe Villasenor managed to dismantle Phil Baroni about a minute and a half into the fight. Baroni, who is know for his ripped physique and entertaining ring entrances and trash talking, is now at 10-10 and clearly very disappointed with the outcome of the fight. Baroni was very emotional at the post fight press conference when speaking about the unswerving support of legend Mark ‘The Hammer” Coleman. It is unclear what will happen with Baroni from here.

In the only women’s fight of the night, Gina Carano managed to outlast Kaitlyn Young to earn a victory. It was pretty clear as the fight grew longer that Carano was too powerful for Young. Carano weighed in at 144.5 lbs for this fight which was more than the 140 lb limit. This is something that is commonplace for Carano as she has been over the weight limit for her last 4 fights. This means that either Carano has not learned how to cut enough weight yet or perhaps that there needs to be some leeway with weight classes for women. Perhaps upping the current weight class to 150 lbs or perhaps creating a different division would be a good idea. Like men, not all women are meant to be in the same weight category and forcing them to do so can result in unhealthy and unfit fighters as they would be so dehydrated from cutting weight that it would affect their performance in the right and their health. Also, if the women really want to be taken seriously, they need to fight full 5 minute rounds. Otherwise, it will be the classic argument of not playing on the same field.

In my opinion the best fight of the night was between Scott “Hands of Steel” Smith and “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler. There was some drama with this fight as at times fans were heard booing the action which probably irritated any true fans as the action was fast paced and both competitors clearly came to put on a good show. To the casual fans – these are professional athletes that train full time, you will not see them swinging wildly 100% of the time. There is a lot of technique that goes into the performance. The excitement lies in the  impending result, not in the actual one haymaker that may flatten an opponent. The eagerness is in knowing that these guys have the capacity and talent to make this happen.
This fight ended part way through the third round when Smith was accidentally poked in the eye by Lawler. Lawler immediately acknowledged it and apologized. The rules state that Smith gets up to 5 minutes to recover. During this time, a doctor came into examine Smith upon which she was told by Smith on two occasions that he could not see out of the affected eye. If Smith wanted the fight to continue, this was a huge mistake. This is where the rules perhaps some adjustment or clarifying. Smith felt that although he could not see properly, he would have the full 5 minutes and then make a determination at that point. Smith clearly did not expect the fight to be stopped. One of two things needs to happen to make this situation right in the future: 1) Smith needs to keep his mouth shut when talking to the Dr. who is bound by the rules to make a decision on the fight should Smith give any self-diagnosis that would result in the fight being stopped, or 2) The Dr. needs to consider anything mentioned by the fighter initially as a tentative assessment and offer re-evaluation after the full 5 minutes unless the fighter clearly states that he cannot continue. As disappointing this result was to many fans (including myself at the time), a rematch is almost a guarantee. Overall, I am glad with the outcome because I have seen way too many fights where someone gets poked in the eye and then does not fight the same afterwards and loses. The fans generally consider this result as gospel, however; I always wonder if things would have been different if the eye poke never took place. A rematch gives fans the opportunity to see truly who the better fighter will be. So, while I do believe that the rules need to be amended, it will end up better overall for the sport in the end.
A side note for this fight is that I believed that it should have been the main event. It was a title fight and both competitors are at the top of their game and proven fighters.

Lastly the main event was between Kimbo Slice and James “The Colossus” Thompson. I don’t have much to say about this one. Kimbo ended up winning due to referee stoppage in the third round. I do believe that it was a very even fight overall until then. As per MMA rules, the fight should have been stopped at the end of the second round due to Thompson delivering numerous unanswered and undefended elbows and punches while on top of Kimbo. This scene lasted for well over a minute with no referee intervention.
Ironically, the fight did end with Kimbo punching Thompson’s massive cauliflower ear resulting in blood squirting and followed up by further haymakers causing the referee to call the fight over. Thompson was so disgusted with the decision to stop the fight that he put his hand in the face of the referee in frustration. Mauro Ranallo, one of the announcers, mentioned Thompson’s cauliflower ear on numerous occasions while commentating the fight. This will definitely go down in controversy but EliteXC still has the Kimbo hype intact so they should be happy about that.

Overall, it was a good showing. The main points were that the fans require further education, the women’s division needs some adjustments and more events to come will help dictate whether CBS will consider this a good investment.

On another note, I was disappointed to see that Gina Carono did not make weight for this event. She was fined 12.5% of her purse which will go to Kaitlin Young who will allow the fight to go ahead anyway.

Kimbo Slice vs James “Colossus” Thompson will be the main event although I believe the real fight to watch will be Robbie Lawler vs Scott Smith. Both throw very heavy hands and are veterans of the game. Lawler is champion right now so that adds to the intensity of the fight.

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!

And on to the fights…

First up on the televised event was Thiago Silva vs Antonio Mendes. I had picked Silva and I was rather concerned when he was caught with a high kick and was rocked but he kept his composure and ended up catching Mendes with enough strikes and ended the fight with some ground and pound causing Mendes to tap. I picked Silva to win putting me at 1-0.

Surprisingly the next fight was Tito Ortiz vs Lyoto Machida. This seemed more like it would be played out later in the night considering the popularity of Ortiz (whether you love him or hate him). Unfortunately this ended up a boring fight. Can’t really blame Ortiz for that as he did try to engage with Machida but Machida was extremely evasive and avoided most of Ortiz’ punishment. Surely Ortiz wasn’t happy with being decisioned by Lyoto. Probably the most exciting part of the fight was within the last minute of the third round when Ortiz had Machida in a triangle and then transitioned to an arm bar. It seemed that Ortiz had it hooked in, but somehow Machida slipped out perhaps using the sweat to slip out. Tito was given the mic after the fight and called his interactions with Dana White ‘bullshit’ but was sure to thank the Fertittas for their support. Ortiz was very gracious to the fans. Strangely enough when Joe Rogan asked whether this was really Ortiz’ last fight in the UFC, Tito said he wasn’t sure and would decide over the next couple of weeks. A quick funny sidenote in the fight was when Yves Lavigne slipped and fell on his ass. I had picked Ortiz with my heart and not my head so this led me to 1-1.

The next fight was Wilson Gouveia vs Goran Reljic. Reljic came in undefeated for his UFC debut. Goran trains with Mirko Cro Cop and this showed with his hard kicks to Gouveia’s head all on the right side. Soon enough Wilson’s right arm was bruised. This fight went back and forth with Relic seeming to have the upper hand for the first while until Wilson took over and looked dominant until getting caught with a punch to his temple putting him on the ground and eventually losing via stoppage. I picked Gouveia so this loss lowered my tally to 1-2.

Keith Jardine indicated that he was surprised to see that we was an underdog for this fight against Wanderlei Silva. Wanderlei has had 3 fights in the UFC and has lost them all. In his defense, these were all against top notch opponents. Dana White has openly expressed his admiration for Wanderlei’s fighting style in that he fights to put on a good show, win or lose. With that said, Wanderlei really needed this win as his back was against the wall with these 3 prior losses. Jardine also claimed that his standup was better than Silva’s. The fight opened very aggressively with the two exchanging punches. Silva looked dominant again like his days in Pride catching Jardine with a punch that knocked him down and then Silva lived up to his “Axe Murderer” moniker by swarming on Jardine resulting in a referee stoppage just 36 seconds into the first round. Jardine was down for quite some time before being able to walk out of the Octagon under his own power. Silva was extremely gracious in his victory complimenting Jardine and thanking the UFC for the opportunity to fight as well as the crowd in attendance for their support of such a great sport. I picked Silva. Back to even at 2-2.

In the main event, Sean Sherk entered the octagon first with a record of 35-2-1 with his only losses to Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre at 170 lbs. Upon entering the octagon, Sherk looked ripped as usual. Throughout the course of the first 3 rounds Penn took advantage of his reach and hit Sherk with numerous jabs and Sherk ended up coming up short on the striking yet continued with the same gameplan.  At the end of the third round Sherk made the same mistake he made against Franca by ducking his head when his opponent came at him and BJ caught him with a knee to the head that stunned Sherk and then Penn followed it up with a series of blows as the bell sounded ending the round. It was determined that Sherk couldn’t continue and BJ was crowned the undisputed lightweight champion. BJ had nothing but respectful words for Sherk after the fight. Sherk, who was disappointed, did say that he would continue fighting and made a point of thanking his loyal fans that stuck by him over the past 10 months.

Overall, it was a decent PPV. I was personally disappointed with some of the results, but I have to admit that I was not surprised at all.

I actually ordered this PPV as it was shown FINALLY in HD by Rogers. Of course, the HD channel was $10 more expensive. Even though some may view this as unreasonable, the HD version is a great deal clearer than the regular version so I went for it. Plus, it was Ortiz’ last UFC fight.

M1-Global was an ill fated attempted at merging Russian and North American promotions.  As with any businesses, the result from failing can create something much more successful and promising than the intention of the original endeavor. Enter Affliction.

The major complaint of certain fighters in the UFC lately have been that they are underpaid, under promoted and too restricted by their contracts. Affliction may be trying to revolutionize the sport by avoiding all of these problems. Tim Sylvia has expressed that he appreciates freedom in his contract so that he may fight in other organizations. He does make a good point in that if he fights and he does incur any injuries that require lengthy healing, he may be able to fight again shortly thereafter and consequently make more money in a short amount of time and have the opportunity to either continue momentum after a win or recover following a loss.

What gives Affliction a lot of promise is putting together a great card full of competitors that were either ousted by the UFC or estranged from there:

MAIN CARD (PAY PER VIEW)

• Fedor Emelianenko vs. Tim Sylvia
• Josh Barnett vs. Pedro Rizzo
• Ben Rothwell vs. TBA
• Paul Buentello vs. Aleksander Emelianenko
• Matt Lindland vs. Fabio Nascimento
• Renato “Babalu” Sobral vs. Mike Whitehead

PRELIMINARY CARD

• Ray Lazama vs. Justin Levens
• Mark Hominick vs. Savant Young
• J.J. Ambrose vs. Patrick Speight
• Brett Cooper vs. Mike Pyle

This card gives everyone the opportunity to see whether the hype behind Fedor is deserved or not as he is fighting a former UFC champion who has proven himself as one of the best heavyweights over the past several years (despite the Tim haters opinions).

I am really excited to see Babalu fighting again. He was supposed to fight Vernon Tiger White not too long ago but that show was cancelled due to financial reasons on behalf of the company. I will very interested to see how he does against Mike Whitehead who is a talented opponent.

The matchup of Paul Buentello vs Alexsander Emelianenko could be a real war as well. It’s great to see Mark Hominick back in action again also.

The MMA world is getting bigger and Affliction is just one way of realizing the growth of the sport.

Affliction Banned will be available to watch on July 19th on Pay Per View. There could be connections with HDNet in the future as well for airing events.

Check out the event trailer

I always laugh when I see this. Classic. Charles McCarthy lost to Michael Bisping and decided to go into early retirement to focus on coaching instead.

With all that said, many players have reported no issues whatsoever and I am one of them I am happy to say. (note – I did upgrade my hard drive in my PS3 so I am no longer using the stock 40GB).

The game itself is extremely well done for the following reasons (my comments relate to only a 5% completion):

• It’s easy to play: practically anyone can pick up a controller and go through the motions of advancing the game. When you are given a mission you will see yellow line on the map which you follow to your destination (this is quite doable unlike Burnout Paradise at times when you are going mach 10).
• Keep enough of the old and bring in the new: Rockstar didn’t forget why the GTA series was so popular so they made sure to keep it familiar to its predecessors but also incorporate new features. In this installment, you can get in just about any vehicle you want, drive motorcycles (including doing stunts), control speedboats and helicopters (training is provided). The game has a linear yet unrestricting feel. You can explore the entire city if you like just by driving around, but whenever you want, you can select a mission and receive detailed instructions on how to accomplish it.
• Although not all of the music is my taste, Rockstar did a nice job of including a great deal of tracks for various palates.  You can feel free to change the radio station as you are driving with a quick toggle of the directional pad. (Vagabond by Greenskeepers is definitely a standout for me)
• It all adds up: The plot starts out with Roman welcoming his cousin Niko to America under the pretense that Roman was a big shot and rich. Niko soon finds out that this is horse puckey but decides to find a way to make things work for himself. The storyline stays true to itself.
• Accessories: The game feels very feature rich and the attention to detail is incredible. You can turn the TV on in your apartment and watch seemingly endless shows and commercials which provide a nice satire to various real life experiences ranging from shaving implements to republican crusades. You can go buy new clothes, buy hot dogs and hamburgers from local stands or perhaps enjoy some activities like bowling, darts or visit a strip bar or night club.
• Integration of Six Axis: This is used for steering your boat, flying the helicopter, riding the motorcycle, bowling and a variety of other activities. It is clear that Rockstar thought about giving PS3 owners a ful experience.
• What’s in the box? Although I didn’t feel it was necessary to spend the extra $30 to get the included jewelry box package, the standard GTA4 packaging is quite enough. It is the only game I have bought so far that needed to place some of the contents on the outside of the plastic disc holder. You receive a full map of Liberty City and fully detailed booklets on the game and controls.
• Playability: Although I am only concentrating on the single player campaign right now, GTA4 does offer online play. The single player experience is quite good in the sense that the graphics are very good (but not jaw dropping) and the frame rate seems to keep steady. For the PS3 version, you are forced to copy about 3GB worth of data to your hard drive and for some this may seem like a lot, however; with a 250GB drive in my system, I don’t have any concerns about this as I know it will speed up the gameplay and make things smooth. For those who complain about this – please remember that you have the more premium system compared to an Xbox 360 and a Blu-Ray disc can hold up to 50GB of data while even a dual layer DVD maxes as just over 8. Something has to give.

Overall I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to start the game and get into it. I somewhat expected to start playing it and put it down after several minutes and move onto something else. After 3 hours uninterrupted, I finally decided to get some other things done. I fully expect this game to fulfill any expectations its consumers may have. We need to keep in mind that with the ability to DLC (downloadable content), the possibilities are endless when it comes to enhancements. This will be game of the year (at least of any game with a Mature rating).

Stop doubting! Believe the hype  – go and buy this game!

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.

St. Pierre went through the death of a young cousin and endured a serious illness suffered by his father. These are undoubtedly very traumatic events, yet, it would be fairly unheard of to call off a fight due to mental anguish. Typical fans would expect a physical injury to be the sole reason for delaying a bout.

In terms of a prediction, it is foolish to go against St. Pierre this time, although surely anyone who is on the Serra bandwagon will end up looking genius if he wins again. This time has all the right ingredients to be a different outcome. St. Pierre is no longer dealing with those emotional issues and in fact hired a sports psychologist to help with straightening out some things. Anyone who squaks at this method lacks the capacity to understand the pressure that St. Pierre who is still fairly young at 26 is under. Having a solid foundation in terms of dialog is definitely an asset. Georges also has had 2 fights since his last fight with Serra. He beat Josh Koschek and destroyed the greatest Welterweight of all time – Matt Hughes. St. Pierre is hungrier now more than ever. You can compare this to BJ Penn’s past. BJ was able to get by on his talent and therefore didn’t train as hard as he could have, this is not necessarily a carbon copy of those events, however; St. Pierre understands much better now what it takes to stay on top. Of course none of these claims discredit Serra. In fact, out of the entire Welterweight division, Serra may be the fighter with the best chance to hang with Georges in the Octagon. Serra is very underestimated. People generally still don’t give him enough credit even though he won the Ultimate Fighter TV show and then beat the champ. The kind of mental toughness and belief in yourself to accomplish that along with a black belt in BJJ are true assets that very few combatants possess.  I can’t resist – St.Pierre with a first round TKO. It must be so. This also sets up Serra vs Hughes which Hughes has already requested due to ‘unfinished business’.

I’ve been a Rich Franklin fan for a long time and I genuinely empathize with the personal struggles he has faced over the past year or so. It has been a collapse for Rich in that he was the defending Middleweight Champion with no one in sight that could defeat him. Everything changed. His father died unexpectedly which was a devastating loss. Also, Anderson Silva came along and as much as Rich respects Silva, surely he would be much happier had Silva never come to the UFC. Rich suffered a brutal loss to Silva and then fought his way back to a title shot in his hometown of Cincinnati. This resulted in virtually the same outcome – even the trademark broken nose was administered. This time around, Rich faces a fellow victim of Anderson Silva in Travis Lutter – another winner of The Ultimate Fighter TV show. This should be an interesting fight. Each fighter has been open about his strategy. Lutter wants to take it to the ground and Rich would rather stand and kickbox. Both fighters really need a victory – this is likely Lutter’s last run at success in the UFC and Rich needs to keep himself in the upper echelon of the weight class. Although the fan in me would somewhat like to see Lutter win if only because he may get a rematch with Anderson Silva – and I truly believe he may be the only one who can beat the Spider (he came close last time and that was after a terrible weight cutting that cause it to be a non-title bout), I am going to have to go with Franklin in this one. I just think Rich is too strong for Lutter. Rich was able to make pretty good work of Yushin Okama who was touted as the physically strongest fighter in the division, so Lutter will suffer the same fate, I believe. The only way to beat Franklin is to out skill him on the feet like Silva has done.

Here is the full card: (my picks are in bold)

Main card (televised):

185 lbs.: Rich Franklin (22-3) vs. Travis Lutter (9-4)
185 lbs.: Kalib Starnes (8-2-1) vs. Nate Quarry (9-2)
185 lbs.: Michael Bisping (15-1) vs. Charles McCarthy (10-4)
155 lbs.: Mac Danzig (17-4-1) vs. Mark Bocek (5-1)

Under card (may not be broadcast):

185 lbs.: Jason MacDonald (19-9) vs. Joe Doerksen (39-11)
185 lbs.: Alan Belcher (12-4) vs. Jason Day (15-5)
155 lbs.: Sam Stout (13-3-1) vs. Rich Clementi (30-12-1)
170 lbs.: Jonathan Goulet (21-9) vs. Kuniyoshi Hironaka (11-4)
265 lbs.: Cain Velasquez (2-0) vs. Brad Morris (10-2)
185 lbs.: Ed Herman (14-5) vs. Demian Maia (6-0)

And once again, Rogers disappoints by not showing this in HD

There are now separate buttons for settings, plugins and users which appear on each page in the top right which makes them easier to reach.

The upgrade process was quite easy as usual and went off with no hitches. If you are a Wordpress user and haven’t upgraded yet, then this might be the one to try. Obviously you want to back up all of your files first as per usual, but once you upgrade, you probably won’t want to go back.

Great work by the Wordpress team in making it the defacto blogging software in my opinion.

I truly believe this was the cause of several fights results. Notably, Tim Boetsch completely gassed which was very unexpected and I believe this caused him to lose.

Kenny Florian was very impressive in his fight against Joe Lauzon. I expected it to be a lot closer and actually picked Lauzon to win as Florian hadn’t looked all that great to me recently. Perhaps Florian is back on track?

Thiago Alves caught Karo Parisyan with a knee to the face that dropped him and he was not defending himself momentarily and it was stopped by the referee. Parisyan was very upset with the stoppage. There are a lot of Karo haters out there that criticize him for putting on boring fights and eking out wins. This win by Alves will surely make them happy. Parisyan is now even further away from a title shot now that he was once poised to receive in the past but was unable to compete due to injury.

Houston Alexander got knocked out in 8 seconds which started with a superman punch from James Irvin followed by a solid connecting punch while Alexander was down which cemented the victory. Alexander claims he was fine and pled to Steve Mazzagatti that it was stopped prematurely.

Probably the fight of the night (although I haven’t seen the rest of the undercard) would be Nate Diaz vs Kurt Pellegrino. This fight was action packed from the start and teetered back and forth with momentum until Diaz finally through ‘Batman’ into his patented triangle choke upon which locking up, Diaz threw his arms out signifying victory and also flexed to place an exclamation point on his impending win.

It was awesome to see free UFC on Spike for 3 hours which is what the fans asked for in droves. It was great to see them respond and I’m sure the ratings will indicate that it was worth it. As mentioned though, I would never again put on a show in Denver again. Also, while I’m asking for favors – how about showing this in HD? Now that would be amazing!

1 – Open Avidemux and load your video (say yes to any messages that come up).

2 – From the “Auto” menu at the top, select PSP (H.264) and then click on OK (you can change your resolution if you want, but I leave it as high quality). (screenshot shown below)

3 – Change the “Format” from PSP to MP4 and then save your video as an .mp4 file extension (the encoding process will begin). Click image below to enlarge.

Once completed, you get an mp4 file that you can play on your PS3. The encoding time involved will vary based on the quality you select, how much of a conversion needs to be done from the previous video and also the size of the previous video. It would be great if the finefolks at Avidemux would add this preset the Auto menu or let you add your own Custom Auto settings to the menu.
My testing was done on an AMD Dual Core machine with 4GB of memory using the 64 bit version of Arch Linux.

After further testing I have found that the key is make sure you select MPEG-4 AVC x264 for the video and FAAC for the audio and MP4 as the container. As long as you select these settings, your encoded video should play fine on your PS3. The PSP Hi-Res auto setting is great to use as a guideline, but just keep in mind that the video will be resized to 720×480 so if you don’t want the re-size to take place, then set the controls yourself.

• Randy Couture vs Fedor. Now that Fedor has become a free agent, many are expecting or at least hoping that the ultimate match up will take place. For some reason, I just don’t think this will live up to the hype even if it did take place. Fedor hasn’t fought anyone of a good caliber in a long time. The only fight that really lived up to its billing after being hyped up was Chuck Liddell vs Wanderlei Silva.
• The path of Chuck Liddell. Even though Chuck has said that he would even like to fight Fedor, this is not likely going to happen. Although, admittedly, this would be one hell of a warm up match if Fedor was ever scheduled to fight Couture like a lot of fans want to see. Chuck is actually in a pretty good position even though he lost his belt and suffered a loss to Keith Jardine. He has a reason to be motivated and to improve his skills. Although, he is aging, a motivated and hard training Liddell is very dangerous and it will be exciting to watch his path back to the belt as he intends.
• Tito Ortiz has said he is definitely leaving the UFC after his fight with Lyoto Machida. Although I am a fan of Ortiz, he really hasn’t performed well in his last several fights. He scraped by Forrest Griffin in a fight that many thought Griffin actually won. He had a draw against Rashad Evans where he looked defeated in the final round. I see him either dominating Machida and then giving Dana White the bird or causing some kind of huge controversy. Don’t expect this fight and the surrounding hype to be anything less than a spectacle.
• The Lightweight title. Sean Sherk vs BJ Penn will be one of the most anticipated matches in recent UFC history. There is plenty of ammunition for bad blood in this one (literally) as Penn has outright called Sherk a cheater over the steroid controversy that surrounded Sherk after fighting Hermes Franca and successfully defending his Lightweight title. Sherk did manage to reduce his suspension handed down by the NSAC but the fog of suspicion on his steroid use will be with him until he returns and dominates a game opponent. A match against Penn is the best thing for Sherk in terms of redeeming himself. Penn is training hard these days so this should be one hell of a fight. Expect both men to be well prepared.
• Georges St.Pierre is one of the most likable UFC competitors. Not only is he seen as the complete package as an MMA fighter with his abilities, but he embodies the spirit of the sport much like Anderson Silva does. For these reasons and for being scheduled to face the current welterweight champion Matt Serra in his hometown of Montreal, he will be heavily favored in the books and also in the arena where the capacity crowd will surely erupt in an explosiveness never before seen.
• Brock Lesnar matching up against Frank Mir was a flatout mistake on the part of the UFC. The only thing right about it was that it was Super Bowl weekend and they had a fight that garnered a lot of attention and probably helped sell a few more pay per views. There are plenty of people for Brock to fight before facing former champions who look poised to take the heavyweight title again.
• Anderson Silva is clearly the best pound for pound fighter in the world right now. I don’t believe anyone can beat him at the natural weight of 185 lbs. The only thing remaining in terms of a test is his mental stability. Him requesting to fight Roy Jones junior indicates a lack of purpose in his mind regarding the UFC (easy to understand) and maybe some boredom?
• The Ultimate Fighter season 7 looks like it could be best season ever with Forrest Griffin and Quinton Rampage Jackson as the coaches. While both men are very entertaining and mild mannered, watch for their competitive streaks to show a different side of them during the show.

That’s it for now. More topics to be discussed soon!

The last system I bought (not including my PSP) was an Xbox (not 360). In its original state, the Xbox was not extremely useful to me other than using it for games. The reason for me actually getting an Xbox was due to me learning that it could be used for more than just a gaming machine, if it was altered by doing a software modification and installing Linux on it. This would allow for homebrew apps to be installed and would also allow it to serve as a conduit between a home server and a TV in terms of streaming media files (movies, music, photos). It also had a built in weather forecast and also the ability to play non-original games (copied). Of course, I would never do such a thing, but clearly some users would consider this an advantage. Moving on to newer technology…

One of the major disadvantages of buying anything made by a large company is that they tend to restrict a lot of features on it due to property protection. While this is understandable, it really restricts the user at times. The following information discusses the PS3’s native capabilities. I have done absolutely nothing to change any of the stock items. All of these features are included out of the box! This is what really impressed me about the PS3:

Sony’s PS3 gives the user a lot of control and here are some examples:

• Easy to swap out hard drive. The PS3 comes with a serial ata hard drive which is easily accessible and also easily changed by the user if desired. If for example, you purchase a PS3 with a 40GB hard drive and want more space, Sony includes a backup utility for your files and also will prompt you to format the new drive when installed. From there, all of your previous files can be restored.
• Install Linux. Sony even has an option right in their menu that allows you to install any version of Linux you like as long as it is compatible with the PS3. What a great way to support open source!
• Play your media files across your network through your PS3. The PS3 firmware update 2.0 added support for the Divx codec (which was a huge reason for my purchase) so that most video files can now be played. I suspect that Sony will add more when requested in the future.
• Standard USB ports. Instead of inventing some odd input, Sony chose to use standard USB ports for connecting their controllers and accessories. Did I mention that you can connect a USB keyboard and mouse and use that to browse the internet with the built in browser? Also, you can plug in any USB external device (flashdrive, hard drive etc) and copy files to it.

The Playstation 3 is technologically superior to any other gaming system on the market.

• The 3.2Ghz processor boasts 8 cores so there will be no shortage of power anytime soon.
• The Graphics processor is also multi core
• Includes Blu-Ray for both games and movies. Recently Blu-Ray unofficially cemented its place in the future of media. The massive storage capacity allows for game content which means better resolutions on games and sharper movies.

The Playstation 3 offers many cost effective values to the user:

• FREE online gameplay. Yes, Xbox zealots will find some way to criticize the quality of this, but the mere fact that Sony made the effort on behalf of their customers to do this instead of imposing a monthly fee is a great thing in my opinion. In terms of the quality, I’ve used it for several games it it seems perfectly fine to me.
• The Playstation store is a button click away from loading which does have very inexpensive older titles for purchase as well as game add-ons. Also, you can download FREE Blu-Ray previews, game demos and movie trailers.

Sony cures Cancer!! OK, well, not exactly, but they are at least doing something to help — or allowing you the chance to help.

• Sony includes a built in option to use Folding at Home which is a way to use this incredibly powerful processor to do the work of complex computer equations that are helping to find the cure for many diseases. This again, is totally free. Over one million users are signed into Folding at Home through the PS3.

Someone recently asked me which system to get. I answered by saying that they are all good systems and I stand by that. It really depends on what you want to do with the machine. For example, due to the fact that the Wii and Xbox 360 have been out longer, they have a lot more games. Another factor is that the game developers will need more time to be able to use the power of the PS3. Since I am not a hardcore gamer, this is something I don’t mind waiting for. Having said that, I currently own four games: Tiger Woods 2008, Assassin’s Creed, Ratchet and Clank – Tools of Destruction and Burnout Paradise. All of these titles look amazing and are a lot of fun to play. Even the games I have downloaded are very engaging.

Ultimately it’s your choice to decide on whether you want one of these systems and also which one suits you best, however; it is very hard to beat the PS3 when you measure its all around usability.

Mir vs Lesnar. This fight was highly anticipated and really could only go 1 of 2 ways. Either Mir would submit Lesnar thereby showing Lesnar’s inexperience in the art of submission. The other way this could have went was with Lesnar performing ground and pound and forcing a TKO. This time it was the first prediction. Let’s keep in mind that this was Lesnar’s first UFC appearance and he admitted that he had practiced getting out of leglocks about a 1,000 times but somehow got caught in Mir’s. I suspect that Lesnar will be around for a while and will come back more comfortable in the octagon.

Tim Sylvia vs Antonio Nogeuira was the surprise fight of the night for me in terms of the outcome. Nogeuira looked very good and typical of previous performances, he just takes a lot of punishment and then waits for his opponent to tire and then takes advantage.  Nogeuira is now the only  fighter to hold two titles at once time in the UFC – the Pride heavyweight championship along with the UFC heavyweight championship.

The last few UFC PPV events have been fairly good so hopefully this trend continues.

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?

The main event was between BJ Penn and Joe Stevenson. When I first heard about this fight, I honestly did not know who to pick. I really wanted to wait and see what BJ’s attitude would be in terms of training for it. In the past, he had been a bit lazy with his training and if came off as underestimating Joe, then it would be a really tough call. BJ had plenty of interviews where he stated he was taking his career seriously and wanted to leave a legacy behind. He seemed to have a fire in him that had not been seen before. This is why I picked BJ to win. I didn’t expect he would win in the way he did which was basically because of a glancing elbow he landed to Joe’s face  causing excessive bleeding and clearly had a huge impact on the fight’s outcome. BJ landed this elbow cleanly and deliberately which in a mounted position. Although the cut did not officially end due to a cut, it did have a huge effect on the match. This occurrence happens in MMA and is expected. After all, it was BJ’s efforts that put him into a position to accomplish this. Unlike the fight between Couture and Gonzaga which was an incidental broken nose to Gonzaga in a previous UFC pay per view, Joe was cut as a deliberate blow in battle.
Following the fight, BJ was interviewed by Joe Rogan where he uttered “Sean Sherk – you’re dead!” Ironically Sherk had been a guest commentator on the title fight and said nothing negative about BJ the entire time. Sherk entered the octagon and asserted that BJ would have to beat him before he could call himself the champion. BJ came back into the octagon and shook Sean’s hand in a respectful way and said that it would be a good fight. This future matchup should be fantastic.

A heavyweight rematch between Gabriel Gonzaga and Fabricio Werdum ended up being a bit of a surprise. Gonzaga issued several devastating leg kicks to Werdum from the start which caused Werdum to collapse to the ground on a few occasions. One would think with this type of an advantage from the outset, that it would just be a matter of time before Gonzaga finished the job. Werdum managed to turn the tables on Gonzaga and became aggressive until the fight was finished in the second round by Werdum. Gonzaga didn’t look nearly as fresh in the second round which led to questions about this conditioning.

Probably the most disappointing performance was that given by Kendall Grove who was clearly overwhelmed by Jorge Rivera who is several years the elder of Grove. I had gone against Grove the last couple of events and this had proved correct, however; with news of him rededicating himself to training and laying off his marijuana drug habit, I thought the outcome would be different. I should have went with Rivera which is what I originally wanted to do, but I thought I would give the supposed former pothead a chance as there should have been a real sense of urgency for Grove in this fight, but instead he looked weak and got beat down easily.

I bet Jason Lambert is very disappointed after losing to Wilson Gouveia. Lambert was dominating Gouveia until he left himself open and took a shot on the chin that knocked him out. It was mentioned during the broadcast that even Dana White was saying that Lambert was too strong for Gouveia. Suddenly, the fight was over and Lambert had no idea what had happened. I had picked Lambert who really should have one, but got sloppy. He will learn from this mistake though.

Marcus Davis continued his winning streak by defeating Jess Liaudun  by knockout. Davis is an exciting fighter to watch and he just opened himself up to more fierce competition. It will be interesting to see who his next opponent will be. I had picked Davis.

In similar fashion, Alessio Sakara defeated James Lee which helps get Sakara back into the winning column after his loss to Houston Alexander.

Antoni Hardonk got back into the win column as well by defating Colin Robinson easily with a brutal kick and a connecting punch that sent Robinson to the ground. Hardonk still has a lot of climbing to do to get into title contention as this is his first win since being easily disposed of by Frank Mir in his last fight. I picked Colin Robinson although I didn’t know much about him.

Paul Kelly and Paul Taylor in my opinion should get the fight of the night. These gentlemen were true sportsmen and exemplified the respect of the arts to each other and once the opening bell rang, unleashed a flurry of punches that may be unmatched in any other UFC bout.  Paul Kelly ended up winning, but this reminded me somewhat of Griffin vs Bonnar part 1. Only one fighter got a win from this, but neither left as a loser in a proper fan’s mind. I had picked Kelly.

Sam Stout won a decision over Per Eklund. Apparently Sam’s “hands of steel” could not put away Eklund. I picked Stout.

This was not a great PPV, but entertaining enough. Part of the incentive for the UFC is to bring in hometown guys like Paul Taylor, Paul Kelly, Colin Robinson and Marcus Davis (well, Davis is now in Maine but is constantly flashing his Irish descent). While most were entertaining, I am not sure that Colin Robinson put on his best performance. It will be interesting to see the line up for the UFC PPV coming to Canada in April.

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.

In the main event, both Hughes and St. Pierre came out looking confident as the crowd anticipated a great third match between these two high level competitors. GSP looked very dominant in the first round, causing Hughes’ corner to offer him reassurances after the first round. Hughes seemed fairly unphased. The second round was more of a repeat of the first with GSP stuffing not only Hughes’ take down attempts, but taking Hughes to the ground and reddening his face with ground and pound. After GSP wore out and overwhelmed Hughes, he scrambled on the ground with him at first appearing to try a kimura but then grabbing onto Hughes’ arm and cinching in an armbar which forced Hughes to tap. This was an ironic style of victory because Hughes was supposedly the more dominant ground fighter with his stellar wrestling background. St. Pierre demonstrated the new breed of fighter as a weapon in all areas. GSP looked dominant in every aspect of his game. Upon winning, GSP refused to wear the ‘interim’ welterweight belt claiming that Serra was still champion and that he would look forward to a rematch when Serra is healthy. GSP has all the motivation he needs for the rematch with Serra which was an embarrassing loss. If GSP is able to become the undisputed champion at that point, he could be quite an unstoppable force for a long time to come. I picked GSP to win this fight, putting me at 1-0.

Chuch Liddell vs Wanderlei Silva has been one of the most anticipated fights and was finally able to manifest due to Zuffa purchasing Pride where Silva had been fighting. This was a difficult fight to pick for many reasons. Chuck has not looked very good in his last couple of fights and being 38 years old and seemingly not having the same tolerance to age as Couture, he is not the same fighter as he used to be. Even still, a good striker is always dangerous and Chuck’s counterpunching style would seem to fit well with Silva’s aggressive predisposition. I ended up picking Chuck to win this fight and the deciding factor was that it was Silva’s first UFC bout since the Pride acquisition. Very few fighters coming over from Pride have been very impressive in their UFC debut. I had expected that Chuck might be able to knock out Silva and he did land quite a few flurries of strikes that were equivalent to attacks that knocked out previous opponents. Silva did prove that he had a solid chin and stood with Chuck for all three rounds. Silva did look hurt at different times but never went down. Chuck slipped a couple of times but bounced back up and continued. In the end Chuck won a unanimous decision and will start a climb back to the light heavyweight championship. In the meantime, in true Liddell style, he had an after party to attend. My record went to 2-0.

One of the most interesting fights of the night was between Rich “No Love” Clementi and Melvin “The Young Assassin” Guillard. There was a great deal of trash talking between these fighters and the hand gestures continued into the octagon itself as Guillard flipped off Clementi who returned a gesture of his own. In the fight itself, Clementi looked dominant and eventually got Guillard’s back with about a minute left in the first round and upon submission, Clementi made a gesture above Guillard which infuriated the young assassin. Guillard spewed that this feud was not over as he was leaving the octagon. I picked Clementi to win so I moved to 3-0.

A quick run down of the other fights…

Manny Gamburyan made quick work of Nate Mohr submitting him with an ankle lock in the first round and seemed to injur Mohr in the process. I chose Gamburyan to win this fight. I couldn’t go against Manny as he was extremely motivated after having to tap out and forfeit his chance to win the Ultimate Fighter TV show due to a recurring shoulder injury. Still perfect at 4-0.

Undefeated Brazilian Lyoto Machida took on the African Assassin Sokoudjou who was hyped up by a highlight reel showcasing quick and devastating wins. Again, with Sokoudjou being out of his element in the octagon, I chose Machida to continue his winning streak. Although it did surprise a lot of people when Machida won, it was even more shocking to see Lyoto be so dominant over the African. Machida reminds me a lot of Anderson Silva in that he is a very deliberate striker with precision in his movements. Machida could be a real threat at light heavyweight and I think he was too tough of a challenge for Sokodjou in his first UFC fight. I sported a 5-0 record after this fight.

Another newcomer – Sao Palelei took on Eddie Sanchez in the heavyweight division. Eddie Sanchez was expected to lose by many as Sao Palelei had a highlight reel of his own of dominant performances outside of the UFC. Eddie Sanchez stood with Palelei who seemed to gas and eventually the referee stopped the fight after Sanchez had bloodied Palelei’s face to the point where his vision was impaired. I picked Sanchez notching me up to 6-0.

More undercard results:

James Irvin defeated Luiz cane due to a first round disqualification. I picked Irvin, going to 7-0.

Tony DeSouza lost to Roan Carneiro due to a TKO in the second round. This was my first loss causing a 7-1 record.

Canadian Mark Bocek overwhelmed Doug Evans and won a decision. This was my second loss, now 7-2.

Dean Lister won a decision over Jordan Radev. I picked Lister, improving to 8-2.

All in all, this was arguably the best Pay Per View for the UFC of 2007. The UFC really needed an event like this to not only look good on the marquee but also live up to its hype. UFC 79 did not disappoint, offering many entertaining fights. It is consistent events like UFC 79 that will show the rest of the MMA world that they are the leader in the MMA industry.

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.

I’ll discuss the top 3 fights on the card. First up was Paulo Filho vs Chael Sonnen. Chael dominated Filho for the first couple of rounds which surely surprised a lot of people watching. Sonnen made a sloppy mistake with just 5 seconds left in round 2 and was caught in an armbar. Sonnen clearly was in a lot of pain, but after the fight stated that he was not submitting, but instead pleading for the ref not to stop the fight. Regardless, the ref stopped the fight on a submission victory for Filho. In the postfight interview, Sonnen admitted that he should not have gotten caught in the armbar and acquiesced the loss. I personally found this a bit contradictory. I can see Sonnen wanting to be a good sport, but if he really didn’t get submitted, then a real competitor would have been quite disappointed and would have continued the protest. I have a feeling that Sonnen realized that even if he didn’t submit, he would have a broken arm and would not be able to fight and that would have been a worse fate.

WEC 31 marked the return of Jens Pulver to MMA action. Jens was always a smaller 155 lb fighter and despite his successes at that weight class in the UFC, after his loss to BJ Penn, Jens joined the featherweight division at 145 lbs. Jens was undefeated at 7-0 coming into the fight against Cub Swanson who was a hometown favorite. Jens and Cub were previously scheduled to square away months earlier, however; Jens reported a knee injury which delayed the matchup. Cub was outwardly perturbed with this hiatus and at the very least suggested but rather even accused Jens of ducking him. Jens flatly denied any of these claims and demonstrated in the cage that he had nothing to be apprehensive about as he submitted Cub with an anaconda choke only 35 seconds into the first round. While these things happen at times and in some cases are not true indications of a fighters overall ability, but rather a costly lapse of strategy, it still must be a frustrating loss for Cub who had promised to take out his ferocity on Jens. Jens is now touted as the #1 contender for the featherweight title by many. Is just one fight enough to prepare the former UFC lightweight champion for the featherweight title in the WEC? It shouldn’t take long to find out as Jens has asked to fight within the next few months.

So, who would Jens be matched up against for the featherweight title if this should occur? The winner between Urijah Faber and Jeff Curran would produce that opponent. This bout resembled the Chael Sonnen and Paulo Filho fight in many respects. It went past the first round and well into the second with the challenger seemingly dominating. However, as champions always do, Faber rose to the occasion and picked his time to amp up the energy level after Curran may have tired himself trying to gain a more favorable position with which to choke out Faber. Faber cut Curran with some vicious elbows and ended up submitting him with a guillotine choke of his own. After the fight, Faber asserted that he was never in trouble and was prepared to fight for five full rounds if required. Faber also mentioned that it would be an honor to fight Pulver if the WEC puts that match together.

Again, the WEC put on a great show. The undercard was entertaining as well with its own rivalries. As mentioned, the WEC is becoming more successful with more recognizable champions such as Filho, Faber and Doug Marshall who retained his belt as well. Also, the WEC has recognized that the lighter weight classes are a nice market and make for very entertaining fights. With the increased great performances by their champions and bringing new quality fighters into the mix like Jens Pulver, the WEC is doing well to place its own mark in the world of MMA.

Ultimately Huerta will continue his title path and Guida will continue to face top competitors in a stacked lightweight division.

In other action, Mac Danzig did end up getting a victory over Tommy Speer to win the 6 figure UFC contract. Although I do believe that Mac Danzig is a very talented fighter and perhaps he could defeat Tommy Speer in a number of ways, I do not believe that we saw the best Tommy Speer performance.Tommy did not seem himself at all. Perhaps the first time experience of all of the cameras, bright lights and the capacity crowd contributed to his being overwhelmed. Tommy was defeated by a rear naked choke. In many cases, this type of victory is caused by a fighter being too tired to fight back or to a certain extent, acquiescing to a situation.

Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver found some untapped reserve energy in the third round to mount Jared “J-Roc” Rollins after a very bloody battle. Koppenhaver was very emotional after the fight commending J-Roc on his performance and wishing both could have won. After such a spirited battle from both competitors, surely the UFC and its fans would consider them both winners.

Other winners included George Sotiropolous (over Billy Miles) who looked back on track as well as Ben Saunders edging out Dan Barerra. We will likely see many of these competitors again the UFC as the TV appearance will definitely help their popularity.

There are many fights on this card, however; once again, the worst thing is that many of them unfortunately won’t be televised due to time restrictions. This is really too bad for the fighters because TV exposure is the best way for them to show their skills, become more well known and therefore become a bigger draw at events. This all leads into more financial success and more time dedicated to training and getting higher quality trainers and equipment.

The main event is between the poster boy of the UFC lightweight division – Roger “El Matador” Huerta and Clay “The Carpenter” Guida. These are two very well conditioned guys who each have the stamina to go 3 full rounds at full speed. I have a feeling that this fight will be short for some reason. Everything tells me that this should be a decisioned fight after 3 rounds of torrid action. It seems lately in the UFC, when the outcome appears predictable, something unpredictable happens. Stay tuned.

In other action, there is Mac Danzig vs Tommy Speer for the 6 figure UFC contract. Both guys are very motivated for this award. I would have said that Mac Danzig would win by submission but after I saw Tommy not give up after being in a deep triangle choke and then come back to win in his Ultimate Fighter bout, while covered in his own blood, I don’t see it being that easy to call. If I had to pick a winner, I would say Tommy by decision. I just see him grinding things out. That guy can take a lot of punishment. Mac could still win by submission but it would take a great deal of strength to do it and he could burn himself out trying, ending up vulnerable to a stronger fighter. It should be interesting.

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

UFC 78 proved to be one of the toughest cards on which to make predictions. I have to say that I have a lot of respect for anyone who earns a shot in the UFC or for that matter anyone that dedicates the time it takes to get into shape and compete in MMA at a high level. Now, with that disclaimer, I was completely disgusted with Spencer “The King” Fisher’s performance at UFC 78. Maybe his opponent Frankie “The Answer” Edgar was just too much and I am not taking anything away from Edgar as I have seen him fight before and he impressed me. However, Fisher looked like he was either hurt prior to coming into the fight or was coming down with a really bad staph infection, but either way, for a guy who hasn’t had a fight in the UFC in quite a while, it was a dismal and embarrassing performance. I’m not just saying that because I picked him to win. Fisher looked winded, disinterested and apathetic.

Now onto something more interesting. Joe “El Dirte” Doerkson vs Ed “Short Fuse” Herman was next up. Doerksen had beaten Herman in the past but that was over 3 years ago and Herman was adamant that things would be different this time. Herman did end up on the right track with an eventual knockout over Doerksen in the third round after wearing him down. Doerksen nearly got a triangle choke win at the end of the second round and I don’t imagine Herman would have been able to escape if it wasn’t for the bell ringing to end the second round. I lost this pick as well, putting me at a dismal 0-2.

Karo “The Heat” Parisyan took on former Pride fighter Ryo Chonan. Neither the crowd nor Karo were happy with his performance, but he did end up with a unanimous decision. As boring as this fight was, I predicted the exact result – Parisyan with a decision. After this fight I was 1-2.

Houston Alexander took on Thiago Silva. This was a very hyped up fight as Houston Alexander had won 2 straight fights in the UFC in a combined under 2 minutes against Keith Jardine (who has defeated Forrest Griffin and Chuck Liddell) and Alessio Sakara who was a reputable boxer. The opponents were very tough but Alexander just walked right through them. This fight ended up disappointing the New Jersey sellout crowd. Alexander displayed a very weak ground game as Thiago Silva who went 12-0 mounted Alexander and pounded him until he went out. As it turns out, Alexander has some work to do on his ground game if he wants to continue to compete in the UFC. I lost this one as well putting me at 1-3. Ouch!

In the main even between “Sugar” Rashad Evans vs Michael “The Count” Bisping, two undefeated fighters and two Ultimate Fighter winners squared off for the first time. This was a crucial fight for both as it would vault the winner into the top 5 light heavyweights. This went to a decision and ended up a split. The US fans really didn’t seem very supportive of Bisping. The fight wasn’t overly exciting as it was fairly predictable with Evans taking down Bisping and The Count getting up each time and not taking any punishment on the ground. Both were about even in the standup but I would say that Rashad won the fight based on his relentless attempts at takedowns. I won this fight so I went to 2-3. I’ve had some really good results in past UFC events so this one is by far my worst, but there was still the undercard…

Joe Lauzon who is 23 years old was next up against the 18-0 Jason Reinhardt who got his first shot in the UFC at 38 years old. The 15 year difference may have proved a factor as Lauzon submitted Reinhardt in the first round with a rear naked choke. Lauzon looked very impressive and dominant which could be in part thanks to him training full time and living in Hawaii and being trained under BJ Penn. I won this fight so I went to an even 3-3 on my picks. The rest of the undercard put me at 5 of 9 correct which is my worst picking so far, but as mentioned at the top of this entry, this was the toughest UFC event to call yet.

I came across this really cool theme with icons used in a version of Linux called Ubuntu Studio. I didn’t really care much for their default background and splash screen, but their theming inside the DE was very nice. The screenshot above illustrates the gray with blue mix which also is used in the drop down menus. I find this easy on the eyes aesthetically but also literally. I’ve applied this to the Ubuntu install I have as well as other distributions I use. The packages can be found on the universe/multiverse repositories of Ubuntu so it is very simple to install. For anyone using a different distribution, you can simply use the .deb file and extract it and look for the icons and theme directories and then copy them into your respective local user hidden directories. To make this easy, I’ve uploaded a compressed file containing only the icons and theme directories which can be found here Once downloaded you would need to copy the contents of each directory into the matching hidden directories in your /home/user/ if that’s where you want them. For example:

(extract the directories first and open a terminal in the same directory)

cp -R icons/*  /home/username/.icons/

cp -R themes/* /home/username/.themes/

(or you can just use GUI copy and paste)

Once this is done you should be able to choose this theme by going to System > Preferences > Appearance and looking for the theme in there.

When finished, you will have a very nice DE to use as seen in the screenshot above!

Well, I was almost perfect with my picks this time. Yes, I picked Anderson Silva to win over Rich Franklin and Tim Sylvia to win over Brandon Vera. The only fight I lost was the Jorge Gurgel fight.

The Anderson Silva fight was somewhat predictable. Rich Franklin kept saying it would be a war and while the fight did last longer than the first encounter but it was far from a war. Silva displayed how his game is on a whole different level than Franklin’s or any other middleweight he has fought since coming to the UFC. He dismantled Chris Leben and dominated both Nate Marquardt and Travis Lutter. It’s hard to imagine that anyone in that division will be able to take the belt away from Silva anytime soon.  Franklin is now in a very odd position in that he can appear to defeat anyone else in the middleweight division other than Silva. Franklin can continue to fight the same guys reproving himself and then become the #1 contender again. Facing Silva again would be futile unless Franklin made some serious improvements to his skills. Franklin is a big guy for a middleweight. He could try going up to light heavyweight to test his skills there for a while. At least he would see some new competition. Frankin is already cutting to get to 185 so he could easily get to 205. It will be interesting to see what will come next for Rich.

The crowd is never happy with Tim Sylvia even though he has defeated just about every heavyweight out there. When Sylvia fought Randy Couture and lost his title, he was still ailing from major back problems and while Sylvia still didn’t look fantastic against Vera, he did enough to neutralize Vera’s threats and keep his talents at bay. The funniest part of that fight was Vera’s post fight interview when asked if he would drop to light heavyweight after losing, Vera asked the crowd if they felt that Sylvia had kicked his ass to which the audience resoundingly responded with boos and Vera indicated “then I guess I will stay at heavyweight bitches!!!!”. What a great way to end the fight. It was probably more entertaining than the fight itself.

The only pick I lost was the Jorge Gurgel fight. After watching Jorge’s last fight where his cardio looked great and he kept the pressure on for all 3 rounds, showing great heart, I knew he would come into his hometown and put forth a good effort. Unfortunately, Alvin Robinson had too much firepower and talent and own handily. What was really classy and loyal was seeing Gurgel corner Rich Franklin even though his face was battered and taped up.

There are basically two main events for this pay per view.

First is Rich Franklin trying to avenge his title loss to Anderson Silva. Rich does seem a lot more refocused for this fight, but Silva is a very well rounded fighter. A lot of fighters are classified as ‘well rounded’ but Silva is not mediocre at a few things, he is outstanding at numerous aspects of the game. As much as I like Franklin and respect his game, I have a hard time seeing him winning this fight.

Brandon “The Truth” Vera will challenge Tim “The Maine-iac” Silvia for a contender spot for the heavyweight championship title vacated by Randy Couture. Some herald Vera as the new breed and future of the heavyweight division. He is a perfect 8-0 although the criticism is that he is untested. Silvia did not look very good in his last few outings including a title loss to Couture; however, Silvia has since had his back injury taken care of and claims to be in top form. There are two questions for this match – which Tim Silvia will we see and even if we see the best Tim Silvia, can that version beat Vera? This should be a great fight. Vera hasn’t found in the UFC due to managerial issues but says he has been training the whole time. Training is not the same as fighting, but Vera will be truly tested facing Silvia at UFC 77.

A lot of people were shocked that Forrest Griffin picked Mauricio “Shogun” Rua as his next opponent. After watching Shogun’s Brother “Ninja” lose decisively to Robbie Lawler in EliteXC, I had the impression that Chutebox wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I knew Forrest had incredible heart as well so I picked Forrest to win by decision. Griffin ended up finishing Rua just 15 seconds before the fight was over. This was a bit annoying for me because I picked Griffin to win by decision, if he had just let the fight go to the scorecards

Jon Fitch went up against crowd favorite Diego Sanchez. I actually had seen Fitch fight before and after seeing Diego’s uninspired loss to Koschek, I decided to go with Fitch which turned out to be a wise choice as he won a decision.

Overall, I went 6 for 9 including the undercard picks. Not too bad considering some of the undercard fighters I had never heard of before.

Luckily for MMA fans, these other organizations have some great fighters that may or may not have had some Octagon time and are now thriving elsewhere and a good example of that is someone like Robbie Lawler. Also, it can be a place where fighters can prove themselves perhaps for the first time or maybe for a comeback like Nick Diaz.

The free televised card started off with Jake Shields vs Renato Verissimo. Shields looked like he might have been in trouble at one point but quickly turned the tables and dominated with ground and pound and earned a TKO victory. This was a good fight, but it was over quickly. Shields overmatched Verissimo on this night.

The most peculiar match of the night was between Gina Carano and Tonya Evinger. This was the first women’s bout I had seen in a high profile event like this EliteXC one, but that isn’t what made it seem odd to me. First, for those of you who don’t know, Gina is known as the poster girl for women’s MMA. There is every reason for promoters to want to see her do well and push her popularity as she is a perfect marketing tool. She has talent and the look. In the fight with Tonya Evinger, it seemed very clear to me that Tonya was stronger than Gina and when the fight went to the ground (an area Gina isn’t nearly as skilled in compared to her standup), it was definitely to Evinger’s advantage. Strangely though, seconds before the round ended when it seemed that Evinger was in total control, Evinger gave up her dominant position and looked like she went limp flat on the ground, giving her back and neck to Carano for a rear naked choke victory. Evinger looked disgusted when Carano’s hand was raised in victory. I know it’s terrible to think of something like this being set up and maybe I’m tainted by all those years of my youth watching wrestling entertainment, but it just didn’t feel right to me.

Joey Villasenor took on up and comer Riki Fukuda. This was an excellent fight. It went the distance and both of these guys proved their each have good chins. This fight was very evenly matched and exciting to watch. This was basically a gatekeeper match in my eyes with Villasenor proving he still has some fight in him, but beating a younger opponent after a full three rounds.

Nick Diaz was in his first fight since coming off a 6 month suspension for testing positive for marijuana use causing his victory over Gomi to be ruled a no contest. Diaz has been very outspoken in interviews indicating that he had been using marijuana for numerous fights in the past and was never tested for it. He also stated that he was high for the recent marathon he participated in.  He has also said that he will never test positive for marijuana again. Versus “Iron” Mike Aina,  Diaz showed his precision boxing skills while Aina used more of a brawl style. Both fighters stayed in the fight and competed very well. I personally thought Aina had won the fight but it was a close decision. It did end up being a close decision going to Diaz which wasn’t very pleasing to the hometown crowd. It’s one of those decisions that reinforces that it is always best not to let a fight go to the judges, but I certainly wouldn’t call the decision unjust in any way. It really could have gone either way. I thought Aina was more aggressive and I don’t know why Diaz didn’t use more of his BJJ skills because I do believe he could have got a submission. Either way, it was a very entertaining fight.

In the main event, “Ruthless” Lawler took on Mauricio “Ninja” Rua who had said that although he respected the Miletich camp, that he felt that Chutebox was better. From the start of this start, I could tell that Lawler was in better shape and was just biding his time, looking to figure out his timing, while Rua just threw shots. It seemed only a matter of time before Lawler got his chance to rip apart Rua’s standup. In the third round, Lawler got his chance as it was very clear that Rua had gassed himself and along with Lawler figuring out the timing on taking his shots, proved to be the advantage Lawler capitalized on. Lawler connected on a glancing uppercut and then timed a few other punches perfectly until Rua hit the canvass and then in trademark style, Lawler reared back his right arm and leveled several haymakers while Rua was on the ground. Lawler ended up walking out with the Elite XC belt. I was really impressed with Lawler’s patience in this fight.

In the post fight press conference, Diaz, who would have seemed to go on forever as he appeared to in his post fight interview, thanked Elite XC and referred to Aina as “this guy” several times. Also, Elite XC’s live promoter Gary Shaw made a point of saying that Elite XC would have as many weight classes as necessary to keep fighters healthy and that he felt that having to cut weight was a concern and should be avoided when fighters are not in a good position to rehydrate themselves. It certainly seems to be attracting a lot of attention from the fighters and their payouts are quite comparable to UFC’s so it could set a nice precedent.

This Elite XC event was just as entertaining as virtually any UFC PPV I have seen and frankly was probably better than the last 4 or 5 in recent recollection. Excellent job Elite XC!

The story of the night more than anything else was the ability to come back from adversity in fights. And on to the results…

Houston Alexander was first up against Alessio Sakara. Alexander was coming off a quick knockout vicory of Keith Jardin who will be fighting Chuck Liddell next (not sure how that makes any sense). Alexander came out explosive as he did in his previous fight, determined to show that is last victory was not a fluke as he mentioned in pre fight interviews. Alexander did end up overwhelming Sakara and seemed to prove himself as a real legitimate contender at light heavyweight. I had picked Alexander so I was 1-0 after this fight.

Next up was Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis vs hometown favorite “Relentless” Paul Taylor.  Taylor caught Davis with a crushing leg kick to the side of the head, knocking Davis over and it appeared that the fight was all but over. Davis kept his composure and went into a clinch on the ground and finally recovered and turned the tables on Taylor, overpowering him. It was a nice comeback for Davis for sure. I had picked Davis to win, putting me at 2-0 at that point.

Mirko Cro Cop who was knocked out in highight reel fashion by Gabriel Gonzaga was opposing Cheick Kongo who looked menacingly larger and more fit when the two met in the middle of the ring for the refs instructions. Cro Cop appeared slightly more aggressive in the early going, but it was Kongo was seemed to dominate and push the pace, eventually getting Cro Cop to back up. It  was disappointing to see Cro Cop in this state after he said he was embarrassed from the Gonzaga fight. I was really disappointed with Cro Cop’s performance and expected much better from him. It seemed like he was avoiding another knockout at any cost. He looked far too tentative. I had picked Cro Cop to win, putting me at 2-1.

The end of The Ultimate Fighter  3 would have pitted Matt “The Hammer” Hamill against Michael “The Count” Bisping if it wasn’t for Hamill suffering a concussion and not being able to compete. Hamill had been calling out Bisping in email interviews and such so there was some bad blood between the two leading up to this fight. The fight overall was very back and forth, but I strongly felt that Hamill was more aggressive and had Bisping backing up most of the time. Hamill’s standup was much improved, indicated in part of cuts under each of Bisping’s eyes.  The fight ended up going to a decision. One judge had scored the fight 30-27 for Hamill while the two others probably didn’t want to get stabbed in the London parking lot and gave 29-28 scores to Bisping. Situations like this make me feel like the location of the venue affect the judging. It made me feel sick to my stomach. Hamill won this fight in my mind. I really don’t know how anyone in their right mind could give this fight to Bisping, but that’s why it’s always better not to let a fight go to the scorecards. I did pick Bisping to win, this upped me to 3-1.

Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and “Dangerous” Dan Henderson’s title unification bout surprisingly went all five rounds and the proper decision was made as Jackson won a unanimous  decision. Henderson clearly looked winded as the rounds went on. I had picked Jackson to win. I ended up 4-1 on the televised picks.

Disappointing again was that the UFC did not televise the undercard. I have not seen these fights but do plan on watching them as they tend to be some of the best ones to watch – especially the lightweights.

There is another UFC event in two weeks. It will be interesting to see if the UFC will keep up this pace of events. From a marketing and business point of view, it would be a good idea as the popularity is peaking right now.

Also, disappointing is the fact that three of the best fights were not shown on the PPV. The two lightweight fights and also the Babalu fight were not televised as part of the PPV. The Babalu fight was probably the fight that was most discussed after the PPV as it had controversy relating to Babalu apparently intentionally holding a choke after the referee signaled to let go and Babalu apparently waited until Heath passed out.

The end result was that Babalu was fined his $25,000 fight bonus and also released from his contract from the UFC and this fight was foolishly not even a part of the PPV. I ended up going 8 for 9 on my picks. The only fight I lost was the Frank Mir fight against Antoni Hardonk. I wasn’t sure that Frank was ready to come back yet but it looks like he did very well. I like Mir and hope he continues his winning in the UFC.

The next UFC event is on September 15 from London where Michael Bisping will try to continue his winning streak in front of the home crowd. This event is going to be televised free on Spike. Let’s hope for a full card to show and some good fights where we truly get to find out which is the better fighter.

This is definitely worth picking up. There are a few tracks I could do without, but the vast majority are extremely solid.

Even though a lot of the tracks contain a pop like element, Adema still is able to redefine itself as a rock band though with enough grit on other tracks to balance out.

This is a solid release and definitely worth checking out.

Main Event – Gabriel “Napao” Gonzaga challenges Randy “The Natural” Couture for the heavweight title. Of course the big tagline for this fight is that Gonzaga knocked out Mirco Cro Cop. Although it was an impressive and unexpected knockout, it could have been a lucky kick as well. I don’t see Couture suffering the same fate. Couture is successful because of his mental game and physical preparation – he is in phenomenal shape for any age, let alone a guy in his 40’s. Gonzaga is a highly skilled fighter as well and he does have as good a chance as many to beat Couture, but I don’t see it happening. Couture can be a little bit short lived when it comes to belts, it’s as if he just wants to prove a point and then let it go sometimes. Anyway, I’m still going with Couture in this one.

Georges “Rush” St Pierre vs Josh Koschek. St Pierre will likely win this one, he is too hungry to get the belt back after losing, Koschek is still very young and has lots of time to make his move to champion status. Something to watch for — watch St. Pierre and the low blows. He has a tendency to do this in his fights. The only way I seeing Koscheck winning this fight is in a borefest with two overly cautious fighters, otherwise, Pierre will catch him with a knockout or win by decision. I don’t see Koscheck being submitted.

Renato “Babalu” Sobral vs David Heath. I really would like to Sobral make a comeback. He has a great record and has only really lost to champions. It’s an important fight for Babalu, if he loses, he will need to fight some scabs to make his way back up.

Two Lightweight bouts: Roger Huerta vs Alberto Crane and Clay Guida vs Marcus Aurelio. All I can say is that I hope they show both of these fights, because the lightweights usually end up stealing the show.

Once again, I will likely not order this only because Rogers does not show these events in HD. If Rogers makes this available in HD, they can consider me a monthly subscriber to them, but until then, I’m not paying $40 for a regular quality tv broadcast.

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!

Hermes Franca challenged for the lightweight title. Hermes had dropped to his knees, begging Dana White for a title shot in true GSP form and he ended up getting his chance. The fight went the full duration of 25 miunutes. Sherk dominated the fight, taking Franca to the ground at will and then controlling him like a rag doll from there. Franca was successful with kneeing Sherk in the head at the start of nearly every round but Sherk’s hard skull endured the strike each time and then the match continued with Sherk’s ground domination. Surely, lots of fans considered this a boring fight, but Sherk’s impressive ground skills for those who appreciated the tenacity demonstrated by the Muscleshark. Sherk took a unanimous decision victory. The only downfall is that he was only paid $28,000 for his efforts.

The Ortiz and Evans fight ended up a draw due to Ortiz grabbing the fence too much and being deducted a point. This may have worked in Tito’s favor because he seemed even happier at the idea of a rematch. Considering his $210,000 payout, the next fight promises to garner more attention and a bigger earning for him. Tito appears ready to retire and trying to build up enough money to comfortably do so. It likely would have been a worse scenario had Ortiz dominated or outright won. Ortiz did clearly dominate in the first round but seemed to weaken as Evans got stronger through the next two rounds. Ortiz did report a couple of injuries after the fight. While this may not go to 3 fights like the Ortiz / Shamrock rivalry, a rematch is already a done deal. If Ortiz is healthy and wants to prove something, he has the capacity to win.

In the Middleweight championship bout, it was Anderson Silva vs Nate Marquardt. Even though the UFC tried to tout up Nate as much as possible for the fight, he was easily disposed of by Silva’s precision strikes. The best news about this result is that it sets up a rematch between Rich Franklin and Anderson. These are two class act fighters that always keep things exciting so whichever PPV this is shown on, is well worth the price of admission.

Overall, “Stacked” wasn’t a failure by any stretch, however; it definitely did not live up to to its billing.

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.

Anderson Silva makes his second title defense, this time against Nate Marquardt. Surely Rich Franklin is hoping Silva wins so he can have a rematch for the title.  I would expect Franklin to win if a rematch took place.

Also on the card is Hermes Franca challenging for the Lightweight title owned by Sean “The Muscleshark” Sherk.  If Franca fights at his best, he should win the title. The last time Sherk fought, he looked gassed in the third round. It has been a long time since Sherk fought in a UFC event as well and this will be his first title defense since winning the belt in a fight against Kenny Florian who is back himself to take on Alvin Robinson. In another lightweight even Frank Edgar is going to battle Mark Bocek which should be interesting since both fighter are undefeated. Edgar is a very exciting fighter to watch.

Stephan Bonnar and Jorge Gurgel also make appearances on the card. This should definitely be a great show.

Zeitgeist which is German for “The Spirit of the Age”, definitely has the unmistakable Pumpkins sound of old. Not just with Billy Corgan’s vocals, but also similarities in guitar playing and arrangements  and of course Jimmy’s signature drumming.

The singe “Tarantula” received a lot of airplay and “Doomsday Clock” was featured on the Pumpkin’s myspace page.

After only a couple of listens, it’s hard to make a judgment, but it sounds more like candidates for “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. Check it out if you are a Pumpkins fan.

The lightweight battle was between Clay Guida and Tyson Griffin. Once again, the lightweights demonstrated amazing conditioning and excitement in the fight. There were numerous submission attempts and take downs. There was not a great deal of standup but the transitioning and striking from the ground was equally entertaining. Although the fight was very close, it was Guida who looked more fresh in the third round and was more in control overall. Griffin did a great job of defending and being offensive even in defensive positions, but Guida looked like he wrapped things up in the third round by being on top for the majority of the round. Surprisingly, the judges awarded the fight to Griffin. The crowd was very displeased with the announcement and booed Griffin. In the post fight interview, Griffin did mention that the fight could have gone either way. Ultimately, the decision wasn’t the most important thing about the fight, but rather it was the conditioning of the competitors and entertaining nature of the fight itself. Either of these guys are worthy of PPV status.

Jason MacDonald fought his third TUF fighter (after beating 2 others: Ed Herman and Chris Leben), Rory Singer. These fighters were very evenly matched in the 185 lb division. Jason last lost to Rich Franklin but was looking to get back on track. After the first round, MacDonald looked a lot like he did in the Franklin fight. Singer was in control overall and had a few submission attempts as well as doing well in hte standup. In the second round, MacDonald did well to listen to his corner who instructed him to make sure he mounted Singer do some striking. In the end, the fight was stopped due to ground and pound by MacDonald.  This makes three victories over TUF competitors for MacDonald.

The Forrest Griffin vs Hector Ramirez fight displayed a very different Forrest Griffin. Forrest spent the rounds picking his shots instead of engaging in flurries. Ramirez had no answer and was looking more for a brawl which never happened. Eventually, Griffin picked apart Ramirez which led to referee stoppage. Forrest must be very relieved that he is back in the running again. Ramirez seemed a bit gassed as the fight went on.

The Main Event featured Rich Franklin vs Yushin Okami. There was a great deal of talk about Okami’s strength before this fight. This fight went the 3 round duration. Franklin did appear to overpower Okami on several occasions. Okami did not mount any offense of any significance until the third round where he almost submitted Franklin a few times. Franklin ended up winning a unanimous decision at 29-28. Franklin did look fairly impressive and appears ready to fight to regain his middleweight title against the winner of Anderson Silva vs Nathan Marquart.

Overall, it was a pretty good PPV despite there being no title matches. The UFC has already announced the cards for the next two PPV events which look very good.

Jason “The Athlete” MacDonald vs Rory Singer. Jason lost to Rich Franklin who seems to be back on track (more on Rich below) but has put on some really stellar performances but was clearly overmatched by Franklin. Rory singer, who was a contestant on The Ultimate Fighter, has had a few impressive fights since the tv show. I would predict that MacDonald would win this one, but Singer won’t be a pushover.

Forrest Griffin vs Hector Ramirez. Forrest is coming off a devastating knockout loss to Keith Jardine. Forrest, as always is a consummate hard worker and described as someone who works too hard at times by Randy Couture. Forrest, who is a very popular fan favorite, needs to win this fight to get back on track. Ramirez will come fully prepared and this should be a fairly even fight. This will come down to a lucky punch or who is in better shape. Griffin has indicated that he won’t quit.

Tyson Griffin vs Clay Guida is a lightweight contest that will likely end up stealing the show. Many fans feel that the lightweights are the most entertaining fighters to watch. Watch the last UFC PPV’s and you’ll see why. Tyson Griffin is one of the most entertaining fighters to watch. His conditioning is excellent and he is well rounded. Don’t miss this one!

The main event is Rich Franklin vs Yushin Okami. There is a lot of anticipation for this one. For Rich Franklin, this fight means everything. He must win this. If Franklin loses, it will inevitably look like his decline in the sport after an amazing run of title defenses. Yushin is not going to be an easy victory though. He has won 6 fights in a row against decent opponents. While I do believe Franklin can win this fight and even make it look impressive, it will be interesting to see what Franklin thinks of the rumored super human strength of Okami. Mike Swick was heard in his corner saying how strong Okami was.

Although there is no title defense on this card, it will definitely set up the winner of the Franklin vs Okami fight to challenge for the title from the winner of Silva vs Nathan Marquart.

Evans Blue will probably not sell a million records with this release but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve recognition and respect for releasing two of the most accessible cd’s of the past several years. These cd’s may take a few listens to really get into some of the tracks and hear the subtleties  of the vocals, but it’s well worth the investment.

This is a project that got pushed forward and was a chance for the members to have some fun and in Chad Grey’s eyes – pretend to be 19 all over again, have fun, sing about the rock and roll lifestyle, drinking, partying and all of the things from come from being in a rock band. Mudvayne’s topical tunes usually are more serious so perhaps this is a respite that Chad needed.

I can tell that you cannot expect this to sound like a Mudvayne album because it doesn’t. You will definitely hear the unmistakable sound of Chad Grey’s voice which makes you think it’s Mudvayne at times, but as you listen to the music, you quickly realize it isn’t the same.

Is change good? Well, it all depends on you. Mudvayne is my favorite band and Chad Gray is obviously a reason for that. Any chance I get to listen to Chad sing is a good thing, but there are a lot of reasons why I like Mudvayne so much and a lot of those reasons are missing. I didn’t clearly hear Greg’s guitar work as much as I would have on a Mudvayne record largely due to the other band members drowning him out. I have listened to a lot of Nothingface and really like their stuff as well, but again, it seems better dismantled instead of amalgamated.

Apparently the new Mudvayne record is done and will be released in the fall of 2007. In the meantime, check out Hell Yeah and see what you think.

And onto the fights…

The first televised fight was Chris Leben vs. Kalib Starnes. This overall was a pretty good fight. There were different parts where it seemed either guy could win. Both fighters looked fairly gassed though as this one went the full 3 rounds and ended in a decision for Kalib Starnes.

Next was Keith Jardine vs Houston Alexander. Jardine was irritated in a pre-fight interview indicating that he was frustrated that he was being made to fight Alexander prior to getting a title shot. At the start of the fight, it seemed like Jardine might be right as he appeared to catch Alexander with a punch that dazed him. Following that, Alexander ignited into a flurry of his own punches and eventually knocked out Jardine with an uppercut that made his knees buckle. It will be interesting to see what Jardine says after this one.

Then it was was Terry Martin (so called Mike Tyson lookalike) vs. Ivan Salaverry. Martin was very confident coming in saying it was a mistake for his Salaverry to even take the fight. Martin did end up dominating the fight winning on referee stoppage.

Josh Burkman against Karo Parisyan had a lot of pre-fight tension. The fighters refused to touch gloves in the ring and stood with their faces pressed together while the referee uttered instructions for the fight. The first couple of rounds were fairly even, but I would give the edge to Parisyan as he seemed to control the pace and his punches were landing more squarely while Burkman missed with numerous haymaker style shots. Burkman looked a lot more winded going into the third round than Parisyan.  In the third round, both fighters looked a bit winded.  Parisyan ended up winning a unanimous decision at the end of the fight. Parisyan then pleaded with Dana White for a title shot.

The fight between Din Thomas and Jeremy Stephens who is making his UFC debut at the age of 21 had a great opportunity.  Although Stephens was dominated on the ground in the first round, Stephens did an excellent job avoiding any submissions including several attempts by Thomas to sink in a rear naked choke. Right before the end of the first round, Stephens managed to stand up and then aggressively threw a flurry of punches.  In the second round, there was a controversial stoppage as it didn’t look like Stephens tapped but Thomas has the armbar locked in so hard that he would have broken Stephens’ arm if the fight hadn’t been stopped.

The Main Event was  a rematch between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell. Rampage is the only fighter to defeat Chuck Liddell where Liddell had not avenged the defeat. Liddell looked very loose coming into the octagon while Jackson looked extremely focused. Liddell was not overly aggressive at the start of the fight and Jackson signaled for Liddell  to bring it. Once the exchanges began, Liddell went for a body shot and upon coming up, Jackson caught him with a right cross that sent Liddell to the canvas. From there, Jackson laid into Liddell until McCarthy stopped the fight.  Liddell didn’t argue the decision but seemed quite dazed after the fight.

Yet another Championship fight upset took place.  This has been an interesting year showing Franklin’s loss to Silva, Hughes loss to St. Pierre followed by St. Pierre’s loss to Serra and now Liddell’s loss to Jackson. There are no guarantees in MMA which is what makes it so exciting to watch.

I’ve seen Chuck in some interviews and I have a feeling that concussions have gotten the best of him. Chuck has a fighter’s spirit but maybe it’s time to consider going out a legend.

[ELG64]

Server = http://easylinuxguide.com/downloads/archpkgs/ELG64

I have tested this out on my own 64 bit install and it works fine. This is also indexed so you can download just one or two packages manually if you want as well. I look forward to being able to do other things with our new host. Hopefully this is just the beginning.

Why has Canada been ruled out? In Pandora’s words: “We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.”

It’s unfortunate these sort of things happen, but it is just another example of how legislation is disorganized and unsettled. This is technology surpassing legal imagination and it surely is just another example of many more instances to come.

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.

While the overall album is more of a brooding sentimental stride as opposed to the usual explosion of anthems, it still contains Manson’s steadfast unmistakable vocals that always seem to stay on point and rasp at the most appropriate times. No one in the music industry has this innate ability to open up and sing and sound so natural and yet ride the line of cracking completely as well as Manson. One thing about Manson is that you know whatever you are seeing, hearing or reading, it is all as genuine as Manson can portray it.

• Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
• Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
• Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
• Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
• Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
• Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
• Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
• Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
• Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
• Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
• Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
• Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
• New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
• Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

One of the perks for me is that the Arch package list RSS Feed now works, it was the only feed that didn’t work and probably the one I wanted most to work. Nonetheless, it was nice to see Thunderbird go to version 2 as Firefox has been at 2 stable for quite a while.

The new version includes several new qualities including:

• Blu-ray and HD DVD data recording support
• Upgrade to GTK 2.0
• Improved graphical user interface similar to the look and feel of the current Nero Burning ROM 7 edition
• Unicode support in all languages currently supported by Nero 7 Premium Reloaded

I typically use Gnomebaker, but it’s good to have options. NeroLinux 3 is a step in the right direction. The software has evolved nicely.

The latest version 7.04 offers an improved splash screen to open the festivities. The live cd even seems to run faster than its predecessor which again indicates that Ubuntu is not only about major changes but also refinements. Other notable features that make life easier include:

• 2.6.20 kernel
• Gnome 2.18
• restricted drivers manager (shows up in your taskbar and prompts for installation of drivers such as Nvidia, super easy and convenient)
• Windows Migration tool makes copying settings during the install easy from that “other” OS
• Improved Network Manager including better wireless config with wpa security
• Easy Codec Installation (probably the major complaint about the last release even though it really wasn’t difficult, but codec addition has been made even simpler)
• Built in Beryl. Perhaps taking the cue from Fedora on this one, there is an easy way to enable Beryl settings from within the Gnome Environment

Overall, a nice improvement over the last quality release. Ubuntu continues to help move Linux in the right direction. If you are interested in trying out a distro, Ubuntu is definitely recommended. It’s no wonder why those Ubuntu people are smiling so much.

Adjusting packages for the architecture is only one change recently. Gnome and XFCE4 were moved from /opt into /usr which means that any packages relating to these Desktop Environments will need to be rebuilt to reflect the new locations. The /opt directory may become a thing of the past for ArchLinux but for now, both will work. I would think that a new ISO would be released fairly soon, accommodating these changes.
If anyone has any issues with the repository, please visit the IRC Channel or send me an email and I will look into it.

Hometown favorite Michael Bisping won his bout after dominating it for its duration until he was in danger of being submitted, then came back with a barrage of ground and pound until it was over. Bisping’s young son ran into the ring to offer congratulations and was just in time to hear the post fight interview where Bisping uttered obscenities.

The rest of the headliners were fairly uneventful. Notably, Cheick Kongo and Andre Arlovski were both victorious in their contests, seemingly fighting not to lose instead of putting on a good show for the fans.

UFC 71 is approaching where Chuck Liddell will defend his Light Heavyweight belt against the only unavenged competitor who has defeated him in the past. There have been so many titles changing hands lately other than Liddell’s that he appears to be the only mainstay champion.

It would be nice to see more lightweight fights at 155 lbs. Where the hell is Sean Sherk these days anyway? Let’s get going on watching these guys who are the most exciting and well conditioned athletes in the sport!

WARNING – Do NOT read this if you have not watched UFC 69, it will contain spoilers! UFC 69 was another decent pay per view. This time I did not order it as my cable company provider does not seem to show the UFC pay per view events on one of their HD channels (I’ll have to ask them about that). It was still a good showing overall.

In the main event, Matt Serra surprised probably everyone other than himself by earning a tko of George St. Pierre in the first round. Everyone has a puncher’s chance and Serra caught St. Pierre with a shot to the back of the head that dazed him and it was over from there. St. Pierre will definitely want a rematch but I would instead like to see Serra go up against Matt Hughes and then see the winner of that match face St. Pierre. On a side note, in reference to a previous blog where I mentioned I had noticed a tendency for George St. Pierre to give several low blows to opponents, he did not utter even one in this match, nonetheless, it was a defeat, not a victory.

The best fight by far was the lightweight bout between Roger Huerta and Leonard Garcia. The entire fight was a slugfest with a few well timed take downs. While at times the fighters did seem out of breath, they showed great heart and put on a fantastic show for the fans, neither of them getting gassed. Each had a puncher’s chance to end the fight and it was truly a battle of the iron jaw and neither fell. Huerta did get the better of Garcia and admitted that he came into this fight in the best shape of his life where Garcia had only one month to prepare. Had this type of fight been the finale of The Ultimate Fighter TV show, surely Dana White would have awarded two contracts. A rematch should ensue for sure.

Hometown favorite Mike “Quick” Swick seemed to have no answer for Yushin Okami who overpowered Swick throughout the fight. The only bright point for Swick was when he connected with a few shots and had Okami stumble a little but Swick was not nearly agressive enough on his standup and Okami wore Swick out on the ground to the point where Swick was both demoralized and spent of energy. Swick had looked very impressive until this fight.

There was a lot of hype built up for the fight between Diego “Nightmare” Sanchez who brought his undefeated record of 19-0 into the cage against fellow former Ultimate Fighter TV show entrant Josh Koscheck. Koscheck outwardly admitted that he found Diego’s style of staring down his opponent and then performing zen like hand gestures annoying. Koscheck did fight intelligently though as he seemed to lull Diego’s Nightmare moniker into a harmless Daydream as Koscheck was hardly touched throughout the 15 minute duration. Probably more damaging to both competitors and to the sport itself was the incessant booing by the fans who were clearly watching a boring fight. Surprisingly, even when Diego must have known he was losing, his level of intensity did not change. Koscheck ended up winning a unanimous decision after 3 rounds and was clearly gloating afterwards announcing Sanchez’ record now as 19-1. Koshcheck may be in the running for a title shot before long.

Finally Kendal Grove won by a choke submission against Alan Belcher and inevitably earned the submission of the night due to it being the only televised submission victory.

Speaking of televised, there were 3 other fights that were not even televised on the pay per view. When fans are spending $40 to watch a pay per view as the company would like, it would be nice to be able to see the show in its entirety.

It didn’t seem like all that long ago that Shadows Fall released “Fallout from the War” in 2006 which was the follow up to their 2004 “The War Within”. Of course this is speculation on my part but it appeared from listening to “Fallout from the War” which was a very solid release that it appeared to be extra tracks that perhaps were previously unrecorded or written while on tour of “The War Within” as they bear a striking similarity in sound. Very few songs stand apart from as having a unique sound in comparison to the previous release.

This is not the case with “Threads of Life”. While some songs sound unmistakably familiar such as “Dread Uprising”, “Redemption” and “Final Call”, others showcase a lighter side of the band like “Another Hero Lost” and “The Great Collapse”. Shadows Fall die hards will not be disappointed with in your face songs like “Burning the Lives” and “Venomous” which offer an immediate Shadows Fall experience from the opening chords.

It’s difficult to pick a favorite release at this point as “Fallout from the War” continued to grow on me after several listens and I still will routinely add it to a playlist. One thing is true – Shadows Fall plan to be around and keep touring. They put on an excellent show as well.

This weekend I setup operating systems on 4 older PC’s that were dontated. This was very tedious and time consuming despite the provided Windows 2000 discs taking much less time to install than Windows XP would have especially considering these were older systems ranging between 400 – 700 mhz. The incessent reboots from the updates accounted for a lot of the time of the installation. The fifth PC had a defective hard drive so that will be done at a later date.

I also set up a wireless home network for someone else which went well although the built in Windows XP wireless configuration did not support WPA2 and the link I found that could add support on the Microsoft site could only be installed on a system with Service Pack 1 or lower. It is possible that the card built into the laptop did not have support for WPA2. Either way, wep should do fine as the houses in the area are not side by side and the one neighbor existing is well known.

This time around it is George St. Pierre who won the welterweight belt from Matt Hughes and then was scheduled in a previous pay per view but could not perform due to injury. St Pierre will fight Matt Serra who won the Ultimate Fighter TV show in the welterweight division. Serra is very tenacious and will not go down without a fight, he has won fights in decisions due to his resilience alone. St Pierre will need to employ his precision placement of punches and kicks. I have personally only seen St. Pierre fight about 3 times and each time he had several low blows against his opponent so I will be watching to see if there is a trend.

On the official UFC 69 website, it does indicate that four of the scheduled bouts may not be televised. This could mean that some of the best fights may not be seen. Probably the most anticipated fight is between Josh Koschek and Diego Sanchez. Each were contestants on the Ultimate Fighter TV show. Each has done very well after running up very successful records. Another fighter that is nearly always exciting to watch is Mike “Quick” Swick. He will face Yushin Okami who has an impressive 20-3 record.

Another movie worth checking out is Notes on a Scandal. While the content may not be completely original, the performances by Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett are worth seeing. Even the supporting cast does a nice job in making the story believable. The dialogue is sharp and honest which is a nice departure from some other films.

Certainly the most impressive and exciting fight was the Couture vs. Sylvia bout which brought Couture out of retirement. The 43 year old Couture looked far more conditioned than the giant 6′8″ Sylvia who looked winded after even the first round. Couture opened with a nice combination within the first 15 seconds that rocked Sylvia causing the already excited crowd to erupt in anticipation of an early underdog knockout.  Couture did exactly what he said he would do – he shot in close to Sylvia to take away his reach advantage and then took Sylvia down at will and attempted some submissions and the usual ground and pound. Sylvia had been quite arrogant in interviews and was booed throughout most of the fight. The fans rejoiced when Couture earned a decision victory after the completion of 5 rounds. Sylvia looked like a 43 year old punching bag while Couture came out relatively unscathed. Sylvia also mentioned in the post fight interview that he was injured going into the fight which resulted in more crowd disgust which caused Sylvia to attempt to mitigate his comments by indicating that Couture still deserved to win.  Couture has certainly proved his point. At 43, he is a force in the UFC. What remains to be seen is who will face Couture for the belt next and how long Couture will stay in the sport this time around.

The Heavyweight title on the line in the contest between Randy “The Natural” Couture vs. Tim “The Maine-iac” Sylvia. Randy is coming out of retirement to challenge for the belt. While some critics may feel like the title shot is being handed to Couture prematurely, Couture has kept himself in great shape following his retirement along with the fact that there really isn’t a lot of competition in the heavyweight division excluding Mirko Cro Cop who just recently entered the UFC. Couture has uttered some critical words of Sylvia claiming that Sylvia fights to not lose his title instead of trying to win convincingly like a true champion. Couture’s words do ring true as while Sylvia has won his last few title defenses, he has not done so in convincing fashion. His rematch against Andrei Arlovski was downright boring in parts and when Sylvia defended against Jeff Monson, Sylvia did defend take downs very well and even Monson’s submission attempts even to the extent that Sylvia had Monson in vulnerable positions on a few occasions. Yet, Sylvia never looked as dominating in either fight as his menacing size would appear to permit. Sylvia seems irked by Couture’s comments and this may be the motivation for Sylvia to demonstrate what he has been lacking on a large stage.

With great anticipation I have been eagerly awaiting Matt Hughes and Rich Franklin returning to action. Both looked virtually unstoppable prior to each losing their respective titles in convincing fashion to George St. Pierre and Anderson Silva. Hughes and Franklin are both awesome competitors and how they respond to adversity as true champions will be tested at UFC 68. Hughes will face Chris Lytle of The Ultimate Fighting Championship TV Series acclaim and Franklin will face Jason “The Athlete” MacDonald who is a solidly built up and comer who has consecutive wins in the UFC. Both should be good battles.

The rest of the fights involve fighters trying to make their mark in the UFC including Matt Hamil, the deaf competitor from The Ultimate Fighter TV series. Also, there are two fights at the 155 pound division taking place which is likely the most exciting weight class to watch.

The UFC has planned well for this pay per view (perhaps at the expense of the last one). This one is probably the best lineup in a long time. If you ever had thoughts of ordering a UFC ppv, this is the one to get – especially if you have an HDTV.

Here are the highlights from UFC 67… UFC 67 marked the debut of Quinton “Rampage” Jackson who battled Marvin “The Beastman” Eastman. This fight was less than exciting and was partially explained by Rampage following his victory by attributing it to nerves on his part.

The other debut was of Miko Cro Cop who apparently obtained his moniker due to being a Croatian Police Officer in the anti-terrorist unit in his off time from UFC. Cro Cop’s debut was the most impressive of any of the recent new acquisitions, scoring a KO of Eddie Sanchez in the heavyweight division.
In the title fight, there was a lot of accompanying drama as Travis Lutter who a lot of people gave a decent chance to contend for Anderson Silva’s title, did not make weight. Lutter does not have a coach as he prepares himself. It was clear that Lutter was very disappointed as even though the bout still took place, it was no longer for the middleweight title. At times Lutter looked as though he may be in control – especially on the ground, but Lutter appeared to gas out and Silva ended up getting an arm bar locked in tight and then rained elbows on Lutter’s head causing him to tap. Following the fight, throaty screamer Rogan conducted his usual interview with the victor and Silva was the most animated I have ever seen him, grabbing the microphone and exclaiming in his native language. Silva had indicated that he was somewhat insulted by Lutter not making weight and disappointing the fans. Silva appears to be a man of principle in that he values respect among fighters above all else as well as the fans who show their support. Silva may be champion for quite a while.

Without a doubt, the most exciting bout of the night was between Tyler Griffin and Frankie Edgar who clashed in a lightweight fight. These warriors exhibited every exciting component of an entertaining UFC contest. Both fighters were very well prepared in terms of cardio conditioning as you never saw either fighter get gassed throughout the 3 rounds that were completed. The see-saw battle almost seemed scripted in the sense that it showcase excellent ground skills, transitions and standup. Many fans feel that the lightweight division is the most exiting and these two fighters are adding to the list. Even though Griffin lost the decision, he fought so well that he should be considered for many future opportunities and at only 22 years old, this will surely happen at his will with his continued training.

Dana White is trying to make the UFC more exciting and is doing a reasonable job in doing so, however; lately the Pay Per Views could be more well constructed. UFC 68 appears to be one worth ordering. Let’s hope this is used as a blueprint for future PPV’s.

On a side note, I would like to thank those programmers and developers that write clean code and make package building easy for people like me, whether this is incidental or not, it is appreciated. Also, when download locations or the way a package is built gets changed frequently, it makes it not only more difficult and tedious to build your application but some people may even consider it too much of a bother and not even build it anymore. Take it however you like, but if you want your hard work on an application to be widely used please take the following into consideration:

• Try to use a fairly standard way of building your package such as make/make install or setup.py
• Unless you are switching to a better way to build your code, don’t change the build style
• Pick a naming scheme that is typical for building – using all lowercase, no spaces or odd symbols
• Although it is somewhat out of your control, try to keep your application on the same server

Thanks to all of those people who develop such amazing free applications for all of us to use. The GPL is a fantastic thing but it wouldn’t do much without all of those people (almost all unpaid and still have to work a full time job otherwise) who allow everyone the benefit of using such well developed software!

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.

• Very easy to customize hotkeys using the ~/.fluxbox/keys file including setting up hotkeys for mpc which does an excellent job at controlling mpd (Music Player Daemon). Also, the Ctrl, Alt and Windows Keys can be used in conjunction with any command you choose to enter.

• The ’startup’ file allows you to add in any program or command to start when fluxbox starts. This again, is fully customizable.

• My favorite feature of Fluxbox that I found was being able to fuse any application with another using the tab option. You can middle click and drag the tab at the top left of any window and attach it to another open one. This is especially good for multiple terminal windows if you are using something like Eterm. I find that using Nautilus with the –no-desktop flag and tabbing 3 or 4 of these together is very convenient when you need to view different directories quickly or copy and paste between each of them.

As always the ‘menu’ file is one of the most flexible of any Window Manager. You can enter virtually any command you like. As long as you have your permissions set accordingly, you may set your mount, eject as well as shutdown and restart.

Probably one of the biggest advantages of Fluxbox is the speed it affords you. When you open windows for most applications, they snap right open. Fluxbox may take a little bit of extra time to set up to your liking but it is definitely worth it. If you like fluxbox but really like to have the applets from gnome, you can simply add gnome-applets & to your ~/.fluxbox/startup file and you are all set. Using Flux on a new system will demonstrate the speed and efficiency while using it on an older system will make it a lot more usable and responsive.