Tag Archive for 'Personal'Page 2 of 30

Ubuntu 8.04

Published
by
Cody
on April 16, 2008
in Personal and Technology
. 0 Comments

Following my computer problems of a few days ago, I decided to go ahead and make room to install a distro of Linux on my laptop alongside XP and Vista. I have to say, it was a lot easier than the last time I triple-booted. I installed XP first, then Vista, and finally Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu’s bootloader to it’s own partition, which allowed me to use Vista’s bootloader to load up everything (configured with EasyBCD). It all works perfectly.

I took the chance to try out the latest beta version of Ubuntu, which is due to be released in about 8 days (as you can see by the nifty counter in the sidebar). Compared to past versions of Ubuntu I’ve used, 8.04 is amazing. Sure, the actual interface doesn’t look or act much different (it’s a little shinier, perhaps, and the new search function is pretty cool), but the main difference I noticed is that I didn’t get a debilitating error upon start up. See, with older versions of Ubuntu installed on my Dell laptop, the wireless and graphics cards would not work, and the alternate drivers Ubuntu tried to use would break the system, forcing me to drop into a command line interface to install a special script. But with 8.04, everything actually worked upon start up, displayed in my native resolution of 1280×800 (instead of a rather blurry 1024×768). I had to do some minor configuration to enable the non-free graphics and wireless drivers so I could use my graphics and wireless cards to their full extent, but it was much less work than before.

I’m definitely pleased with this version of Ubuntu. I still doubt that I’ll like it enough to abandon Windows, but at least I haven’t needed to wrestle with it just to make it work right. Hopefully it’ll just get better once it’s out of beta next week.

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B0rked

Published
by
Cody
on April 8, 2008
in Personal and Technology
. 1 Comment

This seems to be a theme with me. I get my computer to perfect working order, and then I decide to mess with it. Why? I don’t know. Some kind of weird compulsion, I guess. Whatever the case, I broke my computer. Again. Well, that’s not completely true. It was only partly broken. For a while, I’d been dual-booting Windows Vista and Windows XP. In case you think that’s odd, I’ll explain why: I use XP for games and Vista for everything else. Games played in Vista tend to have a lower framerate than when they’re played in XP, so I’m sticking with XP for my gaming needs. However, I prefer the Vista interface, which is why it’s my primary operating system.

I recently bought a 320 GB hard drive for my laptop and completely reinstalled everything from scratch. Everything was going great. Then I tried to install Linux. Again. Honestly, I can’t tell you why I have to try this time after time. Maybe I figure that I’ll like it this time, even though I haven’t the past 17 million times. At any rate, it shouldn’t have been a problem to resize one of my Windows partitions and try out a new distro of Linux I downloaded (the beta release of Kubuntu with KDE 4, ’cause the screenshots looked pretty). Turns out, it was a problem. Vista didn’t want to play nice, so I turned to GParted. That stalled out, so I booted up XP and tried out Partition Magic. That completely corrupted my Vista partition, making it impossible to boot into it. Luckily, XP still worked fine, so I was able to go into damage control. Damage control failed horribly (even when I turned to the Vista install disk’s repair function).

Luckily, I had, in my infinite wisdom, completely backed up Vista the night before. Since the only important information on XP was saved games and a few documents, I backed up a couple of folders on XP and wiped the hard drive clean. This time, I was going to reinstall everything and include Linux with it. But I abandoned Kubuntu and went with plain ol’ Ubuntu 7.10, which has worked for me in the past. In a couple of weeks, Ubuntu 8.04 will be out, so I’ll be able to easily upgrade.

The problem now is that I still need to copy over all my documents to the reinstalled Vista. And then I need to reinstall all my programs. And fix all my settings. And update everything…

I just did all of this a couple of weeks ago. It’s killing me.

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iPhone action

Published
by
Cody
on February 26, 2008
in Personal
. 2 Comments

I can’t believe I actually did it. I bought an iPhone. Updates (maybe pics) to follow. Sometime.

I’ll just say it right now: it’s awesome. Seriously. A very much needed upgrade from my old phone. It was a good ol’ phone, but its time had come. Now it’s off to be recycled, while I enjoy the awesomeness of my iPhone.

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Semi-obscure references make me laugh

Published
by
Cody
on February 14, 2008
in Humor and Personal
. 0 Comments

I don’t know quite how popular this video is, but I just recently re-watched Demetri Martin’s “Jokes With Guitar”, a hilarious stand-up act. If you haven’t watched it, the video is below. Watch it or the rest of the post will make about as much sense as a Bush speech.

YouTube Preview Image

It’s a funny monologue, though the drawings accompanying it are…strange. Anyways, there’s a part in there where he’s talking about people writing on bathroom stalls. This is why I thought it awesome when I used a bathroom on my college campus and saw this:

References like that crack me up. Like the number 42 in strange places. Sure, it could just be a random number. Or it could be the Answer to the Question. You know what Question I’m talking about. If you don’t, you suck. Just like Metallica does.

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Don’t shoot me

Published
by
Cody
on February 2, 2008
in Personal and Political
. 0 Comments

Well, I did it. I voted in Washington’s primary. Actually, the primary isn’t until February 19, but using the miracle of absentee voting, I already filled out my ballot. All that’s left is to mail it and ignore the results. Okay, I won’t ignore them. I’ve decided I can’t completely avoid politics, though I still think it’s a waste of time. We should switch over to a parliamentary, proportional representation system and make things more efficient. And fair.

I suppose the burning question is who did I vote for. It may surprise some of you, but I actually voted for John McCain. This is all about the nomination, after all. On the Democrat side, it’s going to be either Obama or Clinton, and I don’t particularly care for either of them. On the Republican side, however, it’s still pretty wide open. I’m thinking it’ll be either Romney or McCain winning the nomination, as Huckabee is falling far behind and Ron Paul is…well, the very definition of “fringe candidate”. So, since I had to choose a party (either Democrat or Republican), I decided to throw my vote behind McCain, since I’d much rather have him as a nominee than Mitt Romney.

Luckily, though I had to basically become a temporary member of the Republican Party for the nomination process, I’m free to vote for whoever I like come November. Washington State doesn’t have party registration, which is nice. The drawback is that we have to pick a single party for the primary and caucus and stick with it. I don’t know if other states do it differently, but I know it’s a rather unpopular policy here. Heck, I might have the whole deal wrong. I honestly don’t know how things work. I just followed the instructions on my ballot.

So, who will I vote for in the election? I don’t know. It all depends on who the nominees are. I highly doubt I’ll vote Democrat, though, unless Mitt Romney gains the Republican nomination. Otherwise, I’ll probably vote for a third party. Or write myself in. I’m kidding about that last part. I don’t want to be president. That is, not until I’ve completed my plans for world domination!

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Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States