Και έτσι ξεκινάει το διάβασμα των MS Vista

Ναι ναι, ξέρω, ξεπούλημα, αλλά τι να κάνω, με αναγκάζουν απο τον χώρο εργασίας. Πραγματικά θα ήθελα πολύ περισσότερο να πάω για χαρτί Linux αλλά δυστυχώς δεν προβλέπεται. Η τράπεζα ζητάει να πάρω ένα χαρτί απο Windows οπότε ένα χαρτί απο Windows πρέπει να πάρω.

Φυσικά και δεν πρόκειται να τα εγκαταστήσω σε δευτερο partition, τουλάχιστον όχι εαν μπορώ να το αποφύγω αλλά αντιθέτως σκέφτομαι να τα βάλω σε ένα Virtual Machine.

Ξεκίνησα αρχικά δοκιμάζοντας τον VMware server (Ακόμα στην έκδοση 1 όταν δοκίμασα) αλλά διότι ακόμη δεν είχα κατεβάσει μια έκδοση εγκατάστασης χρησιμοποίησα το virtual machine που είχε φτιάξει για εξάσκηση ο team leader. Δυστυχώς για αυτό έπρεπε πρώτα να εγκαταστήσω το VMPlayer 2 διότι το VM χρειάζοταν τις έξτα δυνατότητες.

Παίζοντας λίγο με αυτή την εγκατάσταση και βλέπωντας τα Vista (Χωρίς το Aero) ανακάλυψα οτι χρειάζεται να τα κάνω εγκατάσταση ώστε να μπορέσω να προχωρήσω με το διάβασμα, το οποίο περιέχει μαθήματα εγκατάστασης (αυτής της πολύυυυ δύσκολης διεργασίας που). Το μάθημα περιορίζεται στο να σου λέει τα min requirements του συστήματως και να πατήσεις next μερικές φορές (με διάφορες σάλτσες περι έξτρα γλωσσών κλπ που το κάνουν να φαίνεται πιο βαρύ).

Κάπου εκεί αποφάσισα να χρησιμοποιήσω μια σπασμένη έκδωση για να τεστάρω την εγκατάσταση, και εκεί ξεκίνησαν τα γέλια…

Εγκατέστησα το VirtualBox (έτσι για να το δώ) και ξεκίνησα την εγκατάσταση του συστήματος. Απο την πρώτη στιγμή, καθώς το περιβάλλον εγκατάστασης ξεκινούσε, όλο το σύστημα έφαγε τρελό κολλημα. Μιλάμε σε φάση που να σταματάει η μουσική απο το Amarok, το ποντίκι και το πλήκτρολόγιο να μην ανταποκρίνονται κλπ. Είπα “Whatever” και άρχισα να διαβάζω το βιβλίο εκπαίδευσης για την θεωρία. Όταν μετά απο 1 σχεδόν ώρα δεν είδα βελτίωση άρχισα να ανησυχώ. Προσπάθησα να κλείσω την εγκατάσταση, ανάμεσα στις λίγες αναλαμπές λειτουργικότητας που είχε και τελικά τα κατάφερα (μετά απο αρκετή ώρα). Λέω, “δεν μπορεί, θα φταίει ο προβληματικός σκληρός στον οποίο βρίσκεται το image του DVD εγκατάστασης”. Οπότε κάνω μια αντιγραφή στον καινούργιο μου εξωτερικό και προσπαθώ ξανά…μία απο τα ίδια. Cancel πάλι και δοκιμάζω να αντιγράψω στο home directory το DVD image και εκεί είναι που κόλλησε το σύμπαν.
Δυστυχώς από εκεί δεν ξεκολούσε με τίποτα (δεν μπορούσα να σταματήσω την αντιγραφή, το “cancel” δεν ανταποκρινόταν) οπότε πήγα για επανεκ.

Ξεκινάει το boot στο Ubuntu και τρώει ένα ολιγόλεπτο κόλλημα στο οποίο κάτι χαριτομένα ata warnings φαινόντουσαν στην κονσόλα. “Ώπα!” λέω “Αυτό δεν είναι καλό”. Τεσπα μετά απο λίγο συνεχίζει το boot και φτάνω στο desktop. Πάω να κάνω κλικ εδώ…σταματάει το σύστημα να ανταποκρίνεται. Ξεκολάει πάλι μετά απο λίγο. Δοκιμάζω να κάνω κλικ απο εκέι…μία απο τα ίδια. Για να μην τα πολυλογώ, το σύστημα είχε αρχίσει να κολάει μετά απο την παραμικρή ενέργεια ή ακόμα και χωρίς (εμφανή) λόγο. Ειδικά όταν πας να γράψεις στο home directory, το οποίο είναι απλά ένα partition tου ίδιου εσωτερικού sata, πέφτει πολύ γέλιο. Και με “γέλιο” έννοω φυσικά “ξεριζώνω-τα-μαλλία-μου-ουρλιάζοντας-γιατί-μαμιέται-ο-Δίας”.

Μία γρήγορη έρευνα μου έδειξε μερικά μηνύματα που ακόμα δεν έχω καταφέρει να χρησιμοποιήσω αλλά πολύ φοβάμαι οτί ο σκλήρός μου έχει αρχίσει να τα παίζει.

Και εδώ βρίσκομαι αυτή τη στιγμή. Ακόμα δεν έχω καταφέρει να διαβάσω παραπάνω απο το πρώτο κεφάλαιο, το σύστημα μου δουλέβει με σύστημα “δεν γουστάρω μια”, Σταματώντας όποτε του καπνίσει για λίγα λεπτά, και εγώ τραβάω τα αρχ μαλλιά μου γιατίοι εξετάσεις γίνονται σε λιγότερο από ένα μήνα. Σκέφτομαι απλά να πάω να αγοράσω ένα νέο σκληρό αλλά αυτό προυποθέτει ότι τα προβλήματα μου προκείπτουν όντως από εκεί.

Γι’αυτο φίλοι Linux-άδες, έαν έχετε καμία συμβουλή να προσφέρετε, θα την εκτιμούσα αυτή τη στιγμη :-/

Ubuntu trend slowly overcomes XP

After noticing the Google Trends from a lifehacker post, I decided to check out how well Linux is faring against windows. Initially I compared Linux and Windows which gave a huge difference for windows. This is understandable since Linux is not the main environment but rather the core. I then decided to check the actual desktop that someone might use, and the result were interesting

It seems that Ubuntu is slowly overcoming Windows XP in search popularity and even though Vista is still ahead which I will attribute in part to the ridiculous hype it has received. Currently ubuntu is slighly over XP in search popularity but that could be a minor surge as what happened back when Feisty came out. However if you take in the continuous downward trend of XP it might stay that way now that Gutsy is out.

It is also quite interesting to note that Ubuntu is a much more popular word in European sites and/or in European languages. English based sites tend to talk more about windows but that’s understandable if you consider that Europe is pioneering in that space while the USA (read: Companies in USA) is fighting tooth and nail to prevent the spread and awareness of GNU/Linux.

Funny note: Notice how Vista has entries about it since before 2004. It just shows how far back news about it have been circulating.

Ogg to Avi

I finally found the way (again).

I needed such a way so that I could upload youtube videos of my screencasts. For some reason Youtube did not like theora vids, even in .avi format (something about my 1 min, 1Mb vid exceeding limits).

All I had to do after all to convert it into the more popular format after capturing it with Istanbul is:

mencoder input_file.ogg -ovc lavc -nosound -o output_file.avi

Instructions found here

This post is in part here to jog my memory in case I forget once more in the future.

Just one more distro change

Every time that I change a GNU/Linux distro I claim that I’m going to keep it for a while but for some reason as soon as some thing start to break down things always start to look brighter on the other side. So this is how I ended up looking toward Ubuntu once more.

For those that do not follow my distro jumping story (and I blame you not), last thing I was trying out was Sabayon Linux, after getting totally pissed off with my Ubuntu 6.10 installation where the system was hanging all the time without reason. Sabayon’s initial install seemed more stable and I thought to install it. (never mind the fact that the true culprit was Nvidia crappy drivers)

Unfortunately for me, Sabayon was much less stable than it seemed initially. I blame it on the absolute bloatware format of the distro. It just includes so many applications for the same purpose, along with 4 different desktop environment and generally every conceivable package that you could think of that it seems inevitable that something will break as soon as you start upgrading things. If only they had an install option to install a more minimal system…

At some point I had gotten fed up with my CD drives disappearing, Kopete crashing (I eventually used Pidgin which is very very nice), randomly failing HDD (OK that still happens) and having to use legacy nvidia drivers in order to have beryl without system halts, I found myself buying a new external HDD (about time and I thought to myself,

Why not buy a cheap VGA to see if that will stop the system halting with newer Nvidia drivers? If nothing else, you can keep your old one to finally setup the extra server you wanted.

And so I did. I grabbed a Geforce 8500 for 90€ who I mistakenly assumed would be better than my 2.5 year old Geforce 6600 GT AGP. When I reached my place, it occurred to me that if I’m going to go to all the trouble of setting up a new VGA, I might as well go all the way and install Kubuntu Feisty 7.04 which will give me a chance to check out the new Compiz-Beryl Fusion as well. Who knows, maybe the new, “Better and more Stable” version would not overheat my Geforce 6600.

S’yeah, right. The first installation failed because I wanted to keep Sabayon as a second OS but the damn Kubuntu installer did not have support for LVM and insisted on formatting my old boot partition if I were to use it. I couldn’t be bothered at that point to play with Grub so I installed the system in my old 80Gb HDD after freeing up my old 25gb “Storage Space” (Hah!) but no luck. Since the primary HDD is the SATA one, installing it on the ATA drive did not make the system boot the new boot loader as the MBR kubuntu wrote on resided in the inactive drive.
So I bit the bullet and after backing up crucial files (Porn), critical settings (Porn playlists) and other stuff I did not want to lose (Porn links) from the home directory I deleted the Sabayon LVM and installed Kubuntu on the freed partition while formatting the boot sector and keeping my home directory intact. I assumed that K[tag]ubunt[/tag]u would just use my old KDE/Firefox settings and I was mostly right. Unfortunately there were quite a lot of setting that did not work “just right” so I ended up resetting the KDE settings (read: rename the .kde dir) and pasting the app setting I wanted to keep in it afterwards.

The initial problem was that I could not install the propriertary nvidia drivers as in the official documentation as Kubuntu does not include the necessary restricted-manager script. No problem, I fired up the package manager and requested the installation. As it was not installed on the menu, I had to use it from the console but no biggie.
I then installed [tag]compiz[/tag]-fusion and used my gf6000 to see how it went. As expected, it halted the system just as I finished setting it up. No problem then, I opened the box, installed the new VGA and tried to use it. Well I was quite surprised when the restricted-manager told me that I do not have a restricted card, the system recognized it as VESA and no matter what I did, Kubuntu just refused to acknowledge that I had a damn nvidia card inside. Checking on the compatibility list, I discovered that my card was not supported by Ubuntu. *Groan*. Now I had to find out another way to install the driver. I did not want to use Envy as it was supposedly not compatible with the official way, but in the end I gave up and used it because nothing else seemed to work.

Fortunately that helped and my new card started using acceleration. Woe to me when I discovered that it was actually much worse, performance-wise, than my old card
It was at this point that I swore and decided to just buy a good card. Shallow? Quite. But at least I had

an excuse to get myself a present for my good job performance and after all it might allow me to play a newer game. So, I returned the card, became 200€ poorer and got me a Geforce 8800 GTS who I knew was supported this time.

I took me a while to install it because I did not realize it required extra power but I happened to see the appropriate holes as I was getting “hammer and saw” thoughts.

One envy run later (no restricted-manager still said I did not have a restricted card) I got my acceleration going. I set it up and playtested it for a while. Fortunately it did not hang the system anymore.

Now there are a few more details to iron out (like the system not booting up at 1280×1024 even though I put it in the X.org) or allowing me finally to change languages with double-shift (which does not work, again) and stuff like that but from initial experience I believe that, other than a strange slowness issue, Kubuntu is much much more stable than his predecessors and surely more stable than Sabayon 3.3. Time will tell if this will continue. For now I am contect to play around with my new accelerated desktop.

I’m thinking of making a nice video with the new version but I need an editing software that is not too hard to use. i tried Cinerella but it seems to like to crash so I don’t know how much I can use it. If anyone can propose a good screen capture setup (so that it doesn’t start to flicker when too many 3d stuff are drawn) and video editing for [tag]linux[/tag], I’d love to hear it.

Beryl! Finally!

After many tries to get a 3D desktop working, I have finally managed it. It seems the problem lies squarely with the latest and “greatest” Nvidia drivers. I have no idea why, but whenever anything 3D was activated on my computer, the system would totaly hang after a few minutes (usually more before the first time) as if my card was overheating (which is pretty impossible. My card has never overheated and I’ve run much more 3D intensive stuff *coughsupremecommandercough*)

Initially I was trying to achieve this using Linux Mint which is a pretty sweet Ubuntu-based distro in itself. However ever since Ubuntu started randomly freezing, I though it must have been some kind of weird distro bug. In the past I had some lock-ups with Kubuntu so it seemed plausible at the time. Just in case, I decided the try Sabayon from the moment I heard about it. User friendly gentoo based distro? count me in (more on that in a later post).

After not having any random lock-ups in the liveCD, I decided to give it a try. 10 minutes into the installation, BAM. Freeze. No mouse, no keyboard, no Alt-F1 nothing, same thing as before. At this point I was seriously considering smashing something on something else but I held on. Instead I decided to start experimenting a little bit more.

Initially I tried with GLX instead of AIGLX. No help. Then fearing that beryl itself might be the culprit, I tried just running an OpenGL screensaver. No luck. After about 10 minutes it hang up. Not willing to give up, I disabled all desktop accelerationand fired up an another OpenGl Screensaver. 2 minutes in it, dead again (needless for me to explain what this has done to my poor /home partition)

So as a desperate measure, I decided to install the legacy nvidia drivers. I didn’t know how well they would work, so I installed them and rebooted today after I returned from work.

It works! YES! 2 hours later with full acceleration and various screenshot and screencast attempta later there has been no freeze! I cannot express how happy I currently am

Although the drivers are not that good, resulting in a but of a stutter at some points, the Geforce is more than capable of handling a 3D desktop. The result? See for yourself

However I am seriously pissed at Nvidia for putting me through all this trouble with their crappy drivers. They have dropped the ball with Vista but did they have to drop it on GNU/Linux’s foot?

Anyway, here’s a screencast as well. I’m trying to upload it on YouTube as well but it doesn’t seem to like Ogg Theora.

EDIT: Fuck it! Here’s an embeded video. Done with the help of the coolplayer plugin.

EDIT: Video finally uploaded to youtube after I converted it into Mpeg with the help of mencoder. Find embedded video below.

Bandwidth troubles

A very strange thing is happening and I’m not sure how to go about resolving it. I just installed a virtual firewall using VMware and IpCop. Now everything seems to be working as expected with one difference, my speed seems to be borked.

It’s not just a case of the speed simply dropping as I expected originaly, but the speed seems to be as expected in some cases (such as downloading the eve-online client at 1.4MBps), medium in some others (such as bandwidth tests where I get a half the speed I have without it and 1/4 of the upload speed) to non-existant (such as 20KBps Download and Upload on Azureus, where at least upload should be close to 100)

I was going to post a guide for the setting up of IpCop under VMware as a cheap and reliable firewall solution but I want to figure what I’ve configured incorrectly first…

Και γαμώ τα review

Μπορώ να πω ότι αυτό το review για το Λίνουξ είναι απο τα καλύτερα και πιό έξυπνα που έχω διαβάσει. Εύγε κοπέλα μου, μακάρι να είχα το χιούμορ σου

Προτεινόμενο για oποιοδήποτε Έλλην Linux User

Whoo! New toy

Αυτό θέλω. Ποιό Ipod, τώρα. Εδώ μιλάμε για συσκευή με Video Recording, Video playback σε πολλά format, ακόμα και XviD, MP3 και OGG playback. To καλύτερο απ’ολα; Τρέχει σε Linux! Επιτέλους!

Αναρωτιέμαι πόσο hackable είναι. Ελπίζω να μην είναι σαν το TiVo το οποίο είναι φτιαγμένο να μην δουλεύει με πειραγμένο λειτουργικό.

Anyway, I want it….

Xgl at last

Επιτέλους εγκατέστησα το Xgl στο νέο Ubuntu που έστησα στο PC του ξαδελφού μου.

Να αναφέρω εδώ οτι το Ubuntu 6 έχει πραγματικά την πιο εύκολη και απλή εγκατάσταση που έχω δει και είδε τις περισσότερες συσκευές του συστήματος αμέσως (με εξαίρεση την creative webcam). Αν και αγχώθηκα λιγάκι στην αρχή ότσν χρειάστηκε να κάνω resize to μοναδικό partition που είχε το το σύστημα (έλεος;) το οποίο ήταν σε nfts 160Gb, έτσι για να χαίρεται πολύ ο χρήστης εαν τα windows χαλάσουν και μαζί με την επιδιόρθωση χάσει και όλα τα αρχεία του.

Τέλος πάντων, αν και λίγο αργό, το ntfsresize δούλεψε άψογα και παρ’οτι τα windows έφαγαν ένα άσχετο restart στην εκκίνηση και πήγε η ψυχή μου στην κούλουρη, μετά ξεκίνησαν κανονικά. Η υπόλοιπη εγκατάσταση ήταν piece of cake κανονικά. Τόσο απλή που ακόμη και ο ξαδελφός μου θα μπορούσε να την κάνει. Ένα πραγματικό μπράβο στους developers για αυτό.

Anyway, μετά την εγκατάσταση όλα καλά, δεν υπήρξε κανένα απολύτος κόλλημα και μουσική, βίντερο και internet δούλεβαν out of the box. Χρησιμοποιόντας το easyubuntu έβαλα και τα μη ανοιχτά codecs πανεύκολα και όλα οκ. Είχα τελειώσει εγκατάσταση καινούργιου λειτουργικού σε χρονο DT. Το μόνο που κάπως πρέπει να γίνει τώρα είναι να δίνεται το link του easyubuntu κάπου (desktop ίσως) ώστε να μην πρέπει να ψάχνει κάποιος που δεν το έχει ακουστά.

Αποφάσισα μετά να βάλω και μια και το Xgl επιτέλους να το δώ σε κανονική λειτουργία. Ακολούθησα τις οδηγίες απο το ubuntu wiki και το μόνο κόλλημα που έφαγα είναι οτι με την διαδικασία Α της εγκατάατασης του Xgl, δεν λέει να ξεκινήσει και δεν καταλαβαίνω ακόμα γιατί. Έχω την εντύπωση οτι δεν τρέχει το Xgl με αρκετά δικαιόματα γιατι με την διαδικασία Β όλα πήγαν ρολόι αν και πρέπει να έχει κάποιο λάθος το wiki διότι στο τέλος του edit του gdm.conf-custom εκεί που βάζεις command=… στο τέλος δεν πρέπει να έχει το -kb. Μου πήρε λίγη ώρα να το προσέξω αυτό.

Anyway, τώρα είμαι με το Xgl και μπορώ να πω ότι είναι πολύ πορωτικό. Το μόνο που δεν κατάφερα ακόμα είναι να έχω δύο χρήστες συνδεδεμένους με Xgl συγχρόνος. Μου βγάζει ένα error ότι δεν μπόρεσε να ξεκινήσει το Xgl. Στην τελική μπαίνει ένας με Xgl και οι υπόλοιποι με Xorg μέχρι να βρώ την λύση.
Καλή φάση το Ubuntu λοιπόν

Ubuntu

I’ve finaly brought Ubuntu where I want it. I now have [tag]amaroK[/tag]-svn, Firefox 1.5 and nothing has crashed for a few days. I seem to be on stable footing finally.

For the last few days I’ve been tweaking the Smart DJ in order to make it work as I want it to. I’ve converted all my .mp3 collection to .ogg, I’ve vorbisgained everything and had the script analyze everything.
I got it working after a few tries but it still brings some pretty stupid matches now and then. Until I know how its tempo/style slider works I don’t think I’ll be able to use it to its full potential.

However I have written a small guide for Ubuntu here that I hope may help someone.

Suse

I finally found a system I could work with. I took another m/b from work and installed it on my system. I will return the older one tomorrow. This P4 m/b fortunately has DDR slots. Unfortunately it has only 2 and my 512 ram is fubar It recognizes it as 512 but it kills the system in DT time.

I decided to discard the fedora installation to try something new and my original thought was Debian. Completely open and volunteer powered. Unfortunately, even though the original set up was done and I managed to find what to install with aptitude I was stuck at configuring the Xfree window system.
Until now I’ve been using x.org and xfree was kind of different and thus I couldn’t find the configs and even after I found them I coudln’t figure out why the system wouldn’t boot. After a few tries I gave up and tried OpenSuse 10.

Installation went flawlessly (although I would like a DVD version so as not to change installation mediums all the time) and I booted into my new system with all the bells and whistles on (even amarok 1.3.1, I was impressed at the cutting edge) with only one problem. The network would not work. At this point I had to leave to go and play board games with a few friends so I left it for the night.

At about 3am that I returned home, I tried setting up the ips, gateways and dns but nothing seemed to work. I tried disabling firewalls, switching cables, rebooting dsl routers but nothing. I knew that I was missing something because of fatigue so I left it for the other day. Fortunately amarok worked off the box (and finally without crashes) and I could hear some of my own music.

Today I found out what the problem is, it seems I had confused the default gateway with the DNS. I need to put the firewall as a default gateway (duh) and the dsl router as DNS. I can’t think why I didn’t try this before.

So anyway, now I’m in Suse and letting things work by themselves for a while. I’m tired of tweaking and prodding things to work and not know how to fix them so I’m taking a break from Gentoo (that still refuses to boot the kernel). Maybe when I have enough time to waste on my computer I’ll return again.

Limping Back

I’ve managed to get a system running for now.
Yesterday I took an old P4 apart while at work and installed it on my box. Unfortunately too late did I notice that the old-crap p4 motherboard used SDRAM dimms and DDR, that means of course that not only do I work at 1700 MHz but I also lost 133 MHz from memory.
Of course yesterday I did not have SDRAM chips available so I had to make do with Knoppix as best as I could (and It wasn’t much let me tell you). So today I borrowed some dimms as well (2×256 to be exact) that I plan to return when I gather the money for a new system and took them home to install.
Luckily that went fine.

Gentoo, as expected, will not start, it’s got the march=”athlon” flag and until I find how to override that I’m stuck at Fedora, which is not bad now that I see it again. I’ve forgotten of that GTK look. Anyway, some settings are not working correctly over here and I need to do some more tweaking.

If only I had enough money

Still off

Computer @ Home is still dead. After some testing I have decided that the CPU has died and there’s not much I can do about it. What I tried is, I unplugged everything and left the MB only with CPU and Power and it won’t start (even the PSU fan), however the power led on the MB starts which means it is still getting power. I then removed the CPU and booted it again, the led still lighted which is the same effect as before. Ergo the CPU’s dead.

I’ve been using Knoppix on the Smoothwall Firewall to have at least basic internet access but it is dead slow. I mean KDE is unusable and icewm is only marginally better. How could we even work on these thing 6 years ago? Has our OS bloated so much? Anyway, problem is that my optical mouse is USB and that antique does not support that, so I settled for keyboard manipulation, which is fine if you know the shortcuts. Unfortunately I didn’t and it was hell…

At work now, I have taken an MB from work to test it. I hope it works without too much hassle because I do not have money for upgrades even at this time.

I'm not well…again.

Recent developments have dropped my self-esteem and my older friends seem to have abandoned me altogether. It becomes tiresome to find that someone that you used to hang out with very often does not even go into the trouble to call you or send you a instant message. Yeah, 6 years of friendship my ass!
Psymon and Yo!Master, if you happen read this, you SUCK! You haven’t called in ages even though I did try to contact you. Yeah, have a nice time going to the beach or playing games. I know when I’m not wanted, it would be nice to know why at least…

I’ve been working on my linux desktop for the last few days. I have been using KDE and superkaramba themes. It is still a work in progress and this is what I’ve managed ’till now I still need to get the thunderbird theme to work and find some more stuff to fill me screen with.
.

I have also been lurking on the Deviant Art for a while, checking things out. It would be nice to be able to contribute something there as well but alas my artistic abilities are limited to desktop configuration and game design. However I think my sister could benefit from it. If I could just get her to register.

I also found out about Folding @ Home. It is similar to Seti@Home but it is about helping find cures for diseases like alzheimer and cancer so I think it is a much better cause. Since I have a relative power over the company’s network where I work I have installed F@H to 125 PC and got them to work for the good of all mankind. Here’s an updating sample of my contributions so far

Speaking of my work, I have been asked to provide an Active Desktop configuration. I have already cooked something up with my limited HTML/CSS knowledge but I would welcome any hints from anyone who has invested on the subject.

Finding the Doorman

The past tree days at work I’ve been vehemently reading this blog. It’s written by a part-time bouncer with very good writing skills and a healthy dose of humor and sarcasm. It describes the events that occur on the job as well as commenting on various parts of night life. From this blog I’ve managed to completely despise the “Guido’s” as he calls them. Apparently they are similar to our own Greek “Trendy Boys” or as I like to call the Κάγγουρες; you know the look: Jelled spiky short hair, fit stretching t-shirts, shiny necklaces but fortunately not waxed eyebrows (at least not from what I’ve seen). They have also made me completely despise the word “Yo” as Guido’s they seem to say it all the time in a strange imitation of Black lingo. It just ends up sounding stupid.
I’ve seen our kind of Guido march around Ladadika like so many peacocks while I was going from one Metal club to another. They always seem so…poseur-ish to me that I never fail to laugh at them. Truly, I now cannot bring myself to enter the places of Guido gathering only to watch chicks shake their asses and not have one in 10 chance of meeting someone I can have a nice night out with.
In any case that blog is a great reading, I just couldn’t stop and he’s written quite a lot as well. I only wish I had his gift for written speech and I had some kind of experience to write about as well.

Which reminds me; 7 fucking euros for a drink at a small Rock Bar! Who the fuck do they think we are? I was expecting a max of five and I ended up wasting more than I would for drinking 2 beers. FFS!
This was the cost for going out yesterday night with a friend of mine and, just for the hell of it, ordering a B52. And to think that she was asking to go for a beer as well…

Monday I finally had my left ear cleaned from all that…stuff that had gathered inside. The experience was almost painful but luckily not. However I didn find out that I didn’t have to wait one fucking week to clean it out. It was just that the original doctor was old school and din’t know the modern procedures. Now that sucked! I had to go a week half-deaf because the friggin’ doctor couldn’t keep up with the times!

In [tag]Linux[/tag] news: At least I managed to find the cause for the back-right speaker not working. It seems that for some reason the alsa-mixer surround was not full up on the right (how that happened, I do not know) and by simply turning it up, all was back to normal. Gkrellm2 has also stopped segfaulting when I disabled the two plugins I use (which I didn’t use anyway) and [tag]amarok[/tag] does not segfault as long as I use the xine engine…dunno why.
Problem is that my /usr mount is running out of space (only 150MB left at this time) so I don’t know how many more progs can fit/update. I have no idea how I managed to fill up 4GB of space with programs…what the hell is in there?

Feeling good

Ever had one of those days where everything looks great? Well it’s such a day for me. I had a pretty nice night out yesterday, I’ve got a pretty nice day ahead of me, I feel like the king of the world! I am also without sleep and run on caffeine
So I’m at work, solving TNS listener problems, giving my debriefing, setting up Gentoo (which is currently stuck at emerge) and surfind the web. Nothing special.

I just found out that Anorimoi have a new web page. There are one of the greatest and funniest greek metal parody bands around. Manowar should phear these guys, what with albums like Farting the world
They are pretty decent music-wise as well so any metalheads should definitely check them out (and try to find a translation as well).

I still can’t make Gentoo at home to behave. amaroK keeps crashing for no obvious reason, when I use Alsa as well as OSS. Gkrellm also segfaulted constantly but it stopped doing it now, I think it may have been a specific plugin but I haven’t really changed anything. STFW didn’t help much

On the music note, it seems Audioscrobbler has stopped receiving submissions for some reason. It seems their server problems are harder than they make it seem but their front page wants to imply that there isn’t much to worry about. If anyone cared to check their status however it would seem that they don’t accept any submissions at all. Not much of a problem for me other than a bit annoying.

So, yeah I’m energetic!

Fluxin'

Finally set Fluxbox up and running, learned about slits, dockapps, and some other stuff. Now the thing is starting to look cool!
I also set up my Smoothwall and I can finally feel secure enough. I can see a whole lot of portscanning going on but hopefully it doesn’t get past my smoothie. I was afraid its setup was going to be hard but it was a breeze.

Yesterday I also went with my sister to my cousin’s village to “celebrate” easter. It wasn’t as boring as I thought but it wasn’t very great either. Greek Ethnic tends to annoy me.

The last few days have seen a great deal of late night drinking and dancing/headbanging. I spend too much money and I don’t get any hot nekkid chickz…*sigh*

Now I’ve also heard who’s coming for this Summer. Megadeth, Dio, Dream Theater, Iron Maiden and a whole lot of others. I’m going to turn into a ping-pong ball to manage to see all those and I also will need to save a lot of money as well. The Rockwave prices are preposterous as well, I mean WTF 60€ for black sabbath and 45€ for the rest? What do they think we are? We should go to Bulgaria with 15 euros…

I also need to go out today and must still find some company to do it…grr

Gentooing

Yay! Started installing Gentoo on my home system and everything seems to be going well for the time being. I left it happily compiling kde-meta at home. I hope it is done when I get home.

I also visited the Thessaloniki Games Fair this weekend, got into a Hot-shots live session and managed to kill two people with some John-Woo action. In the end my crappy weapons jammed and I got a bullet in the guts. Twas fun!
The rest of the fair wasn’t anything great. Not so much atendees and not too many events all around.

I’m seriously thinking of quitting [tag]WoW[/tag]. I just don’t play anymore and I don’t think I will. Perhaps I will play by this Wednesday although I doubt it.

And hey! The weekend was pretty sweet in any case.

Compile Damn You!

Back at work and bored.
Sunday was BORING! I sat all day and watched South Park, and pretty soon I won’t have any more South Park to watch (but luckily there are other stuff).
At the end of the day a friend called me to play some Warlord. Crom! it’s been so long, and the rest of the day went smoothly (I lost a lot though, my edge is off)

Around 5:30 I decided to call the gf but she was sleeping. She said she’s call back. She didn’t.

Today, at work I was reminded that I was supposed to attend the company’s Gala (or whatever they call them) that I had forgotten entirely, ugh. Luckily they didn’t press the issue…too much.

So now I’m at work and waiting for my gentoo install to finish. Well, to be precise the install IS complete, but I’m waiting for KDE to compile and it’s taking forever. I expect it to last at least 2 days straight. I made a mistake saturday and the config crashed so I had to start all over again…grrr.

Watched an amusing flamewar on the Audioscrobbler forums, over female masturbation. One guy was owned That cheered me up.

Nothing else to do, looks like it’s going to be a slow day. I’m anxious to see if she’s call, but other than that I’m bored. I’m starting to surf too much again, I hope they don’t audit me.

Better but not so well

Yesterday was Ok I guess, I finally played a game of [tag]Chronopia[/tag] and managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I mean I had only 3 models left on the board in the end while the others had half their army. The game was “Capture the Hill” 3 players ffa with a 5 turn limit. Whoever controlled the hill at the end gained extra points. After we decided who captured the hill and calculated the other guys points, just for the record, I asked them to calculate my points as well. Imagine our surprise when the other guy announced “Shit, you’ve won” Much laughter ensued

On other news, I decided not to write about the sentimental stuff on the public log. I just don’t feel comfortable.

Today I’ve been trying to set up Gentoo at a pc at work and I left it compiling the whole kde. I expect it running till monday and then some. I like it though. All this compiling and system-optimization is sweet. If it works well I think I’ll put it at my own system (I’ve already made room)

I’ve fixes the buggy partition as well…by the rough method. Delete/Format/Restore. Mp3z are back in place and amaroK is rocking

Tomorrow I expect to get [tag]WoW[/tag]. I was lucky to get a preorder. Everything was booked and I found a store with 10 preorder copies left for Saturday. Lucky me I hope it will take my mind off the relationship hardships at least although I fear I may grow bored of it as I did Eve online. I bought the collector’s edition too, I wanted something from the WC universe to remind me of my past.

Need to finish tidying up the room sometime.

Hah! As I was writing, Kensha/Tasos showed up on ICQ. I haven’t seen that soul for MANY years…