Thursday, April 30, 2009

Day 982.b Struggling with Local Area Network Configuration

Among the things that I would have liked to accomplish in this life would be to setup my own Local Area Network.

Back in 90s and at the age of 16, I tried to connect our two computers - This Pentium 3 and an older Celeron using coaxial cables.

I was not successful.

Now at the age of 20+ something, I have discovered Ubuntu and I am now trying to connect 3 PCs.

1. This old Pentium 3
2. A slightly younger Pentium 4
3. A slightly younger Celeron

We now have a network switch and some ethernet cables.

My sisters and I managed to play Tremulous! Unfortunately this was on Windows.

Day 982: My Wishlist for Open Source/GNU/Linux/Ubuntu

Here's my wish list for Open Source/GNU/Linux/Ubuntu

1. Stop common marketing tactics used by my favorite distribution
- Sex sells, but please don't pollute Open Source with wallpapers of semi nude faceless women.
- Improper use of the word "FREE". Yes we all know that its FREE and FREE. But the truth is it still needs a lot of work.
- Focus on the truth. Stop saying something that IT can do this and do that, with a tiny little disclaimer here and there. LET IT SPEAK FOR ITSELF!

2. Stop the obsession to make GNU/Linux topple Microsoft's market share
- We don't need to increase market share because IT will survive without a majority market share
- Remember, that open source is not just a new fangled way to distribute or market software. More importantly a way of doing things. Let us not lose sight of the Philosophy behind all of these.



3. Stop bloggers/marketing spinsters from flooding the net with articles about how great GNU/Linux is
- Everytime a major release is released, digg, slashdot, or whatever is flooded with oh so nice articles about how great each release is. The unfortunate fact is, there is a lot to work on.
- Come out with the truth. Come on - 17 seconds boot time? There are still many of us here running legacy hardware.

In "Tech Support"

1. We all know that tech support consists mainly of: a. paid gurus, b. unpaid gurus doing volunteer work, c. forums, d. irc. Sometimes we really do have serious and important problems that need to be addressed seriously rather than be bounced from 1 irc channel to another. The truth of the matter is the reason why some of us are lazy is because we really do not know what is causing what. Not all of us are Einsteins. We feel sad when we have to go to an irc channel and be told to go to irc channel 2 - only to be told to go back to the other irc channel. Come on. I've worked once in a call center and this is what we were trained to do rather than really give the time to listen and answer queries.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Day 981: Re-enable CTRL + Alt + Backspace in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04

CTRL + ALT + Backspace, by default in Jaunty is supposed to restart X. In Windows systems, it's something akin to CTRL + ALT + DEL. The difference is that you are brought back to the login screen where you get to choose your username, enter your password and choose the type of session that you like.

For some reason, Ubuntu devs thought that they should disable it by default in Jaunty. I found a guide to re-enable it:

http://chrisjohnston.org/2009/re-enable-ctrl-alt-backspace-904

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Day 980: I Barely Survived the Upgrade to Jaunty [SOLVED!!!]

I upgraded to Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope today and managed to reach up to this portion. I an able to connect and browse the Internet.

I cannot however, activate my nvidia proprietary card's drivers.

Tip for anyone who is considering upgrading to JJ 9.04:

Tip:

1. Save this webpage: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty
2. Backup your settings

Update:

1. I am now officially screwed. See:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/+bug/305706

$#%&**(#$@%@%@%@&@%@#@#%@#%@##%

Whoopee!!

Last Minute Update 11:08 PM

I was able to install nvidia 173 restricted drivers.

1. Grub was still loading Intrepid Kernel!
2. hbekel in #ubuntu pointed out that I should try running uname -r or uname -a
- The result was Linux ubuntu 8.10 2.27-11-generic
- It should have been Linux ubuntu 9.04 2.27-11-generic!
- A further clue I got was from envyng - it said: Unable to load kernel module
3. I edited Grub using kgrubeditor and copied out the information and pointed to:
- the right kernel module
- the right initrd file!
4. I rebooted and chose my own Grub entry! It works!!!!!

Rock and Roll!

Friday, April 17, 2009

What is a Guryon

What is a guryon? (pronounced as “ghoor-yawn”) 
A guryon is a big colorful kite that makes absurdly loud buzzing noises that sounds like a clunky and old motorcycle that is climbing a mountain. It makes that sound 24/7 specially when you are reading something or writing about something. It is specially good for target practice. 
Whoever invented the guryon should be hung on a ginormous guryon with a ginormous noise emitter for him to hear how good his guryon sounds like.
It is a convenient excuse to annoy your neighbor.

EventId's in Nostr - from CGPT4

The mathematical operation used to derive the event.id in your getSignedEvent function is the SHA-256 hash function, applied to a string rep...