Zeus damnit…and just when I have to work the next day…
The pain. TEH PAIN!
All I have to say is that this week has just been a bundle of pain. Certainly not as much as some others but enough for such a small operation which left me with two gaping holes in my mouth.
I think, this week alone, I must have downed 3 full packages of painkillers easily. Ibuprofen is now my new best friend, while I truly learned to hate Paracetamol which did fuck-all for me (Although that is probably related to the fact that it does not help with inflammation).
In any case, almost every day in the last week I have woken up as a direct result of intense pain and more times than I’d like to, I woke up once or twice in the middle of the night (Fuck you Paracetamol).
Hopefully, eventually this will pass soon, only to start again from the 1st of April.
I think Ubuntu has spoiled me.
For the last day or so I’ve been trying to setup Fedora 8 just to see the progress that has been done there. For those who haven’t checked the history on this blog (i.e. everyone),Fedora Core 1 was pretty much the first distro that I tried as my first serious foray into this wonderful world. So I have always a soft spot for it.
So after I played around with Mint and KDE 4 (Nice btw), I chucked in my freshly burnt DVD and started the installation. To tell the truth, I liked that fact that I didn’t have to wait for a LiveCD environment to load before I started the installation process. I also took notes of what I did and what problems I had in order to write my experience. In order of happening:
- Install Fedora with Basic Packages and Developments Packages
- Login with root (As the system did not prompt me to create a user during the installation process which is strange. I may have missed something but I don’t think so).
- User System -> Adminstration -> Users & Groups to create a normal user
- Discover that he is not a member of any group. Add him to some basic ones
- Try to setup sudo for more security. run visudo and uncomment the option to allow users of the “wheel” group to run all commands. Add the new user to the wheel group
- Run pppoe-setup to set up my dsl connection. Setup more difficult than pppoeconf which took most of the correct choices. Internet connection working now
- Start copying user configurations to a folder in the /home directory called my_clones. Then give everyone permissions to a new group called “clones”, grant all files in that folder with r/w perms for the “clones” group and then link then configuration files to each user’s directory.
- Discover that Amarok doesn’t like that for some reason. Discover the “amarokrc” in the .kde/share/config directory. Link that as well. Collection still not saved. Rebuild it. Curse kde for not needing ownership of configuration files.
- Try to install proprietary Nvidia drivers. Initially follow instructions here
- Try to play some music while waiting for some permissions to change. Discover that Fedora still does not have mp3 support out of the box and no easy way to have it (like amarok informing you to press a button). Sigh and play my personal last.fm radio from firefox 3 beta 4
- Install a bunch of packages that I hope will provide me with mp3 playback. Those include amarok-extras-nonfree.
- Try to install d3lphin and got it without any icons. Unusable. Tried to find out what I was missing and thus installed some kd4 packages. As a result it started installing various things I did not need. In the end I had to reinstall among others VLC, Amarok, and the Gimp ad the KDE packages seem to have some weird dependencies…D3lphin still not working
- Installed Gnucash. It didn’t automatically recognize the configuration files. Fortunately all I had to do was open the ledger file.
- Tried to install Keytouch. Not in Fedora Repositories. Downloaded RPM for fedora 7 and installed. My Play, Back and Forward buttons do not work although they do in Ubuntu.
- Tried to find the advanced compiz manager. Couldn’t. Installed some packages that I seemed appropriate, including emerald but manager didn’t appear and emerald didn’t affect the window decorations. Still haven’t found which package install’s compiz advanced setting manager…
- Trying to adjust the time. Got error: “Failed to locate a program for configuring the date and time. Perhaps none is installed?” – Huh?!
- Wine worked fortunately but I’ve lost my menu items.
- For some reason, on boot, Fedora seems to get stuck on the boot sequence while trying to get an IP for my eth0 device. As I’m not using DHCP but rather I’m using pppoe to connect online, this just slows down the booting for no reason.
- I’ve lost access to my previous installations of Ubuntu and Mint. Well, I’ve lost my previous grub configuration from Mint when Fedora set up the MBR and it’s own grub. I had lost Ubuntu access when Mint formated the /boot sector as a prequisite for using it (I have my /boot on a separate partition) and that pissed my off but I was hoping that Fedora would recognise my other Distro installations and give me options to boot on them. Unfortunately, even though it recognised my old WinXp installation and created an option for it, it did not recognise the GNU/Linux ones. I tried to make manual menus but apparently this only created grub boot sequences fit for Windows. This actually still annoys me. How come different distros can recognise your windows installation but are plainly oblivious to your other GNU/Linux installations? For that matter, why does Ubuntu derivatives insist on formatting your /boot partition before using it? Can’t they just leave it well enough alone?
Anyway, enough ranting. I did manage to make Fedora work partially as I need it but I’m still missing my super custom compiz-fusion eye candy and I’ve lost some settings in the process. Unfortunately I didn’t want to use my previous user directory since different distros have different ways of organizing it and every time I tried to do this, I ended up with a bunch of errors on loading it which were the result of different configuration items.
Unfortunately, my experience with Setting up Fedora 8 is not as good as I’d hoped. Ubuntu is just miles ahead in regards to ease of use.There is no way that a simple user can setup a Linux installation with Fedora with the same ease that you can do in Ubuntu. And this is unfortunate. I just hope the devs take some points on the way that Ubuntu handles the initial configuration and the available menus and copy the useful items.
Nevertheless, I plan to stick with Fedora 8 for a while just to see how well I can use it. Unfortunately I’d like to be able to multi-boot into my other installations but I still have to work on my grub’s menu.lst in order to make it see them.
2 little bastards down. 2 little bastards to go
So here I am, typing one handed because the other hand is holding a block of ice on my cheek to keep the swelling low (No, that’s the real reason. Now go and wash your brain). As you may have guessed by noticing my wonderfully blurred pic on the right, I have pulled out two of my wisdom teeth.
Yes, I wisened up at 27.
After I managed to go to the dentist 9 months later than what I wanted, I was convinced by Viola in coordination with the Dentist to get rid of these worthless pieces of bone. This was generally never high on my list of things to do as they never bothered me much but apparently, at least according to my dentist, they were partially to blame for the grinding of my teeth.
So I took the plunge and today my total sum of teeth has gone from thirty…errr…has been decreased by two.
Unfortunately for me, the roots of these damn things were horribly crooked and/or deep and/or many, leading one to need excessive force to pull out and the second a bit of an operation.
Now I really know what blood smells like, as well as how it feels to really hear a drill in the inside of your head as a piece of tooth root is being excavated, and I’m not joking…
Aaanyway, at least the good to come of this is that the dentist assumed that I would not be able to speak decently and also need some rest so he wrote me 3 days off. Which means the rest of the week is off for me. Kinda like a free and painful vacation.
Setting up a Brainstorm Clone
Ubuntu Brainstorm has recently gone live and it’s really a great project and idea. For those not in the know, it is a dell brainstorm/digg mashup for voting on which ideas people want the Ubuntu devs to work on first.
I wanted to set something like that as a project which would give me a chance to see Drupal as well which is something I wanted to do for a while.
Fortunately a little search showed me that the custom modules have already been provided here and all I needed to do was install them.
So I went for the latest and greatest version of Drupal, 6.1 and I must say that I was surprised on how easy the installation procedure was. Just copy to your directory, set up a mysql database & user and run the script. 2 clicks later and you’re through. Cheers for the Drupal team ;).
I then tried to install the modules, fortunately, even though I was confused a bit, I eventually managed to figure out that I needed to place them into my /sites/all/modules directory. Unfortunately, even though that allowed Drupal to see them, it informed me that they are not compatible with Drupal 6.1 🙁
Oh well, no great loss. I went for an alternate installation of Drupal 5.7. One mysql db and installation later, I was set. I copied the modules in the correct directory again and this time I could activate them. Unfortunately I couldn’t get them to work as they need specific database tables to work. Apparently there is a qawebsite.install php script in the module directory that will create table structures, but there is not mention on how to run it. Am I supposed to rename it to .php and put it on my browser or what (Doesn’t seem that way)?
I hate it when no INSTALL.txt is included 🙁
In the end, I created a brainstorm entry and a launchpad question for this, so hopefully someome might be able to give me some instructions. Lets see.
If any of my readers have any ideas, I would much appreciate to hear them 🙂
At least I get to play with Drupal in the meantime 😀
I hate it when they do that…
Me: IT Servide Desk, Konstantine speaking.
User: Hello, I have a problem.
Me: Alright, how can I help.
U: I changed my password this morning, and then I went to have a coffee. I returned and worked on my outlook for a bit and then called you about my internet problem…
Me: And the problem is…?
U: Well, after you solved that, I had to go away for a while, then I returned and I couldn’t login anymore
Me: Because…?
U: My account is locked.
Me: (Silently) Aaaaargh!
Couldn’t you just skip your day story and just tell me the last sentence from the start?
Seriously people. Don’t do that. Unlocking an account is usually a 10 second job. By explaining what happened before, you make it a 5 minute job and annoy the hell out of me.
Just tell me the problem initially.
This goes along with another classic
Me: IT Service Desk, Konstantine speaking.
U: I can’t login.
Me: How do you mean? What does it say?
U: I just can’t login.
Me: Well, can you tell me what is the message you get?
U: What does it matter? I can’t login, just fix it.
Me: Look I have to know if you’re locked out or if your password is wrong. Can you just read me the error message?
U: *Sigh* Alright, wait. It says to make sure my password and username is ok but I’m positive that it is. It was working until now. Just reset it for me.
Me: *Rolling my eyes* Unfortunately as per standard policy you’ll need to come to our office to reset your password…
This is such a classic conversation that it is annoying. Even though it has been this way for like 5 years, users will still demand that we reset their password remotely. They will also keep us on the phone for 5 minutes for what can be achieved in 10 seconds.
Arrgh!
New
Holy mama!
The new amaroK is coming out and the new stable of Wesnoth is out already.
Specifically, the new amaroK looks amazingly sweet. If anyone thought that it was not a killer app. before, they certainly cannot keep this belief anymore, and since it should be able to run under windows as well, this will probably blow all the competition out of the water.
I still cannot believe how cool the GUI has become 😮
Wesnoth 1.4 also brings a host of updates to the table. Although anyone who’s played the development tree (1.3) has seen them already, they are still a huge improvement over the last stable (1.2.8). If you tried out Wesnoth only about a year ago (or only with the stable) I strongly suggest you take a second look now 😉
How I made Steam play nice with my Ubuntu
I tspent last afternoon trying to make this damn program work normally but for some reason I was always getting stuck when trying to register an account. Eventually I traced the problem with wine’s iexplore version which for some reason would freeze as soon as I start it. It would ask to download the gecko engine (if I hadn’t already downloaded it) and then display a white screen and become unresponsive. I tried various things, even testing it on a clean profile, but nothing fixed it (Wine 0.9.56 btw). This not working IE caused in turn Steam not to work well. It would open but it would also crash when clicking on the “create account” button.
Hopefully a quick googling directed me to the Ubuntu Forums and from there to the IEs for Linux page. Fortunately, that version of IE worked in my PC (PS: I was amazed by the simple and easy installation. Props to the developer!). Unfortunately I couldn’t it run through my normal wine installation. As it is installed on a different .wine directory, I tried linking to the iexplore.exe over there and replacing the one coming with wine but apparently due to different dlls, it didn’t work out. In exasperation, I renamed my .wine directory to winebak and copied the .ies4linux dir as .wine. I then installed Steam in that and started it.
It worked. And it worked perfectly. I was able to run it, create and account, log in and buy a game (which was the sole reason why I wasted my time making wine work) via a credit card (because paypal didn’t work).
Unfortunately, even though navigating steam worked very well, playing the game didn’t 🙁 Steam would vehemently complain that I didn’t have the current DirectX version when trying to run the game, even though I knew from the cracked version that it works without a problem. I could see no way around this unfortunately as I couldn’t figure out which .dlls are necessary to make Steam think I’ve got the correct one.
So, once again in exasperation, I renamed the current .wine dir to winebak2 and renamed winebak to .wine. I then copied the Steam client (which has Audiosurf installed) from winebak2 to .wine and tried again. Now steam would launch but would crash as soon as I logged in due to the annoying iexplore problem. Very fortunately for me, since Audiosurf created a program shortcut in the wine menu, I run it from there and lo and behold! It worked. (Albeit with the same problems as before)
So I now finally have an up-to-date version of Audiosurf and can finally submit my scores to the servers (which seem to running at a crawl, I guess do to the unforeseen popularity) . I must say that I’m loving it. A great luck that the game run on wine out of the box 🙂
Lawful Evil
I have now seen the true face of Corporate Ethics first hand.
See how low the music recording cartel industry and their cronies will go to attack file sharing networks. They have now added domain stealing as well as licence and trademark abuse to their wonderful repertoire of threats, cracking, brainwash and extortion.
There is simply no limit to their immorality; and the latest case is just a wonderful example of how rabidly they are fighting against their inenvitable demise (which they have brought down upon themselves). It’s like the thrashing of a cornered beast. Now that they have decided to shit all over the GPL however, is where I draw the line.
Not only did they threaten an innocent person (the domain holder) with legal action in order to get him to pass the domain name to them. Not only did they subtly modify the site in order to trick regular users to please their corporate masters. Not only are they now giving away a (almost certainly) spyware infested propriertary client (in order to poison the credibility of Shareaza). They are not trying to get the trademark of “Shareaza” in what must be the sleaziest move yet. And they know it! (what with them opening a Cypress shell company to do it so that the true perpetrators won’t be litigated against).
All you D&D players reading this, take note. This is how lawful evil should be role-played.
At this point there are a few things all of us should do:
- First of all, support the legal defence fund of the Shareaza developers. I’ve already chipped in a small amount.
- Link to their current hompage so searches can find them (and delete your links to the old domain):
- See what actions they would like you to do.
Finally, my personal idea is to put pressure on these scum. What we could probably do is use the Six Degrees and find out who is behind this. Once we do then their friends and families should be informed of their behaviour and perhaps given the appropriate social treatment they so deserve.
Seriously, the law is not our friend here. These people are using the law in order to go against the spirit of it. They are hiding behind shell companies and lawyers because they know they are in the wrong. They deserve no mercy and like Mediasentry before them, they will eventually get what is coming to them.
In Solidarity.