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I love me some Super Mario World, but this level (which I’ve never seen) would make me want to break the TV — the hardest level I’ve ever seen!
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Bye Bye Macbook
Wow, I’m really divesting myself of my Apple trappings lately. Yesterday I sold my Macbook on Craigslist, and will be picking up an HP lappy to install Ubuntu on this afternoon.
The Macbook was a great piece of kit, it really was, but there were a couple of things about it that made me move towards selling it. The first is how hot it runs. That sucker runs hot. REALLY hot. REALLY REALLY hot. And while there is a freeware program that ups the fanspeed permananetly in OSX to compensate, the equivelent in Linux was poorly implemented, meaning that by the time I’d run Ubuntu for an hour, I felt like the bottom was going to start dripping plastic.
The other thing that bothered me was linux support for the Macbook’s touchpad was wonky, largely because of the right click issue.
So here I am, back to a ‘regular’ PC for Linux (you can bet that Vista will be wiped before I ever see it, that’s for sure). And I couldn’t be more fine with that!
Incidentally, I was giong to sell it on ebay, but their fees are so astrnomical now (they take a 3.5% cut of your final sale, did you know that?), that I decided to go Craigslist instead. I’m happy to say it was a good experience, and my laptop was sold in less than 2 hours.
Yes, Fuck you ebay you greedy bastards.
-olly
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Bye Bye OSX, Hello Ubuntu Old Friend
So after about 8 months of usage, I’m giving up on OSX. I tried, I truly did, but there are a few things about it that bother me enough to want to switch, and two major developments outside of it that have given me the reason to.First off, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron last night (haven’t had it installed since I dual-booted for a while in beta), and it went off without a hitch. I wiped my entire drive (including my Windows partition for work, but that’s become redundant since I’m using my work desktop more and more now). That’s right, all 80gb of my Macbook are now fully dedicated to my long time favorite OS. What I love about running Ubuntu on the Macbook is that, because of the standardization on the Intel stuff (chipset, video, etc), all of it was immediately recognized (even the sound, which gave me some fuzz issues earlier with Ubuntu/Macbook), the only exception being the wireless card. The wireless card uses the Atheros HAL drivers which means that they are non-free - but a small price to pay to get back to Linux. Downloaded the current stable Madwifi drivers and everything was running smoothly.
Much to my surprise, I even discovered Wicd, which is a great replacement for the craptastic Gnome Network Manager that Ubuntu has standardized on (and which never seemed to work with the Madwifi drivers and my Macbook properly; I have no problem resorting to terminal commands, but why bother for something as simple as connecting to a network?). Wicd’s install simultaneously installed the new net manager and removed Network Manager, a great move on it’s part.
The only other tweak I made was to make the lower ‘enter’ key the right click, everything else was flawless.
Why did I do all this? There are several reasons:
-I felt hamstrung by the lack of customization available in OSX. It’s EASY to customize Linux, and particularly to customize Gnome and KDE as desktop environments. OSX was, in contrast, a constant hunt for 3rd party programs. Want to change the background on the login screen? Need a third party program. Want to change the way the toolbar acts? Third party program. Bleh, no thanks!
-I don’t like the way that the window manager in OSX works. I know it’s odd to say, but I just don’t. Alt-Tab doesn’t work the way it does in Linux, Windows, BSD, etc — and I’m such an Alt-Tab junkie it’s just not working for me to press ‘F8’ or whichever it is to see my windows, then move to the one I want. In general, OSX is a much more mouse driven OS than keyboard driven, and that’s really started to bug me.
-I don’t like how OSX forces you into certain things. When I plug my digi-cam in to it (or my cell phone, which happens to be my digi-cam), I’d like something that pops up and asks me what to do. Instead, OSX is away out of the gate on the import path!
-Security is a joke in OSX out of the box, unless you know what you are doing. Unlike the BSD base that it rides on, OSX is WIDE open when first installed, and only after studying some hardening techniques did I feel like I was up to snuff. Not to mention that Apple has so de-emphasized security in favor of ‘wow’ and multimedia, that updates from them seem to take ages — longer than Windows and WAY longer than Linux. I’d be willing to bet that if OSX had all the viruses and malware aimed at it that our friends in Redmond did, it’d fall apart in a heartbeat. Windows may suck, but at least it’s trying to not suck so hard!
Big Issues:
So I mentioned that there were two big issues that were moving me away, even besides my little ones. These two issues are what have finally made me realize that I no longer need OSX, and want nothing to do with it.
The first issue is this: I don’t need iTunes to manage my music on my iPod any longer. I’m no stranger to using an iPod with Linux, going back to the early days of Amarok and the like barely supporting it. Now, that support has grown to be quite sophisticated, with projects ranging from Songbird to Amarok — Amarok has even gone so far as to provide wireless syncing of my iPod Touch, something that even Apple doesn’t do right now!
Beyond that, I no longer even bother purchasing songs from iTunes, unless I’m given a gift card (in which case I stick to un-DRM’d iTunes plus songs). Instead, Amazon earns my business now with their non-DRM mp3’s. The addition of a Linux Downloader has sealed the deal — where for years there has been no good way to download music in Linux (well, legally that is), there now is. Done and Done.
The second major issue for me was a little announcement that happened at the same time as the iPhone 3G. Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is the next version of Apple’s OS, and guess what — odds are they are going to charge existing users for it. Now, if this was a feature filled, packed to the gills update, then I might understand that. After all, I knew getting in that I was no longer in the realm of Open Source, and that any major upgrades would have a cost associated. However, Snow Leopard is, in Apple’s own words, a release aimed at stability. Hmmm, sounds an awful lot like you mean bug fixes and security updates, and you’ll be damned if you get my money for something you ought to be releasing anyway! Windows 98 to ME anyone? (Not that it was a stable move, but the differences are so slight as to be a joke).
So that’s it. I find myself once more in Ubuntu-land, and it feels good to be back. I last was running Feisty when I jumped to OSX — and Ubuntu has continued their trend of polish and good quality. Feels good to be free again!
-olly
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Courtesy of Time Magazine, check out the slideshow on the evolution of the mobile phone… goes through all the greats — but notice the last slide?
THE IPHONE G3!!!! HOLY CRAP THAT’S SOME PROCESSING POWER!!!!
:) Further proof that the cell phone industry is still a huge mystery to mainstream media.
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Amazing tornado picture, courtesy of the NY Times.
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The Perfect Fathers Day
Hanging out with my daughter, but having no responsibility with her today (no diapers, no feeding, etc). Eating whatever I want. Having the wife pick up spicy thai and cold beer for my dinner. Watching violent movies where Bruce Willis is getting shot at, while sitting in my chair with said beer and thai. A little sumthin sumthin from the wife before bed. Ya, perfect.
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Weird Thought Of The Day
National Hunger Awareness Day and National Donut Day are on the same day in June. Wow.
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Do we seriously need anymore proof then this that copyright laws are horribly, horribly, horribly wrong?
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Thought of the day
I just realized that I walk around every day with over 2k worth of gadgets on my person (well every weekday, on the weekend it ranges from 300 to 800 bucks worth). If I wasn’t such an ogre I think I’d have been mugged by now!
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Formula for douchebaggery: invite bloggers to hear your tracks. Threaten them if they don’t take down the reviews of those tracks. WTF?
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Coco Crisp charging the mound, Boston vs Tampa at Fenway… watch the big old haymaker from the pitcher to Coco — had he connected, that would’ve been the end of it!
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The Necessity of Hope
Hope. It’s such a simple word, and yet in it lies the meaning we all strive for. Hope is that one universal feeling that every person on the planet, in some way shape or form, needs to survive. It’s as vital as breathing, as important as a heartbeat. Hope is that emotion that sustains us through what is, quite frankly, a horribly messed up world. Hope is that four letter word that allows us to look at the shit in our lives, the stuff that is really dragging us down, and move forward.
Hope can also be painful when contrasted against reality. When I look at the world, look at the stuff happening, I simultaneously feel immense sadness and a great hope. The sadness comes largely for what I see slipping away. It’s not that I believe that the world will never get better, simply that the world that I love, the world of freedom and free thought, is atrophying as it has so many times before. Will it grow back? Of course, that’s the way of the world and that’s where my hope comes in. I hope my daughter doesn’t grow up in a world where people have forgotten the joys of being free; of moving through a world where the very thoughts in their heads weren’t used against them in the name of the largest evil that faces mankind at all times, the ironically named “greater good”. Oh, what horrors and atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of this “greater good”! Even the bloody battles fought over the imaginary sky-fairy people call “God” pale in comparison to the cold hearted precision that the “greater good” has incited in people.
“It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not as a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly — again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across a motorway is deadly.” -Douglas Adams
I’m afraid. Not for what will happen to me, but for what my daughter will have to face in the Brave New World ahead. I’m afraid that her ability to choose for herself the life she wants to lead will be the first casualty in the wars being waged against the free and peaceful minded. The hawks of war are flying, and I fear for the doves that fly before them. In the end my greatest fear is that life will end up like the Douglas Adams quote above. Lost in a sea of rules and directives. Democrat, Republican, does it really matter? The relentless hammer on the nail in freedom’s coffin is being pounded from all sides, from those who would force a barbaric and merciless God down our throats, or those who would force a barbaric and merciless State down our throats.
Coming back to that four letter word for a minute, the H-word that keeps us going — why do we maintain it in the face of the tyrants at our doorstep? Especially those of us who don’t believe in the power of the sword, but the power of words?
“The answer’s obvious
We switch the consonants
Change the sword to words and lift continents.” -The Flobots
Hope is all we have, hope that our words are enough to open the eyes of people everywhere. Hope that we will survive the coming storm of jackbooted thugs and their willing accomplices. I hope for a world where life’s beauty is celebrated over it’s harshness. I hope for a world where we work together as a people, not in the sick twisted master-slave mentality that we’ve grown so accustomed to.
In the meantime, all we have is hope. All we have is hope and our will to implement it. All we have is a love of peace and abhorrence of war to get us through. All we have, as we rise up as a people to change the world, is hope.
Hope is a violin playing softly in a State run gulag.
Hope is a smile and a laugh in the face of a cold helmeted police barricade.
Hope is a flower growing on a battlefield.
Hope is what keeps us moving forward, towards a time when peace is the norm, not the exception.
And the freedom to Hope is what we ultimately fight for.
-olly
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Come down, get off your fucking cross.. We need the fucking space to nail the next fool martyr.Tool, from the song Eulogy
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Macbook at Work (XP at work, not OSX)