I use the numbers across the top of the keyboard only when I’m typing in larger blocks of text, or (for instance) I’m on MSN and need to type a number. For stuff like logins, sudo and GIMP shortcuts, I always use the ten-keys because I’m right-handed and lazy, and they’re closer to the mouse.  I didn’t notice until I was working on P’s photos the other day that my ten-keys weren’t working. I use the keyboard shortcut “1” or “Ctrl-1” (has to be the 1 on the keypad) for “view full size” and “fit in window”, respectively, but it wasn’t working. I thought I’d probably accidentally taken over a GIMP keyboard shortcut or something when I’d made some adjustments to Gnome Do, but it wasn’t the end of the world, so I thought, “Meh…I’ll deal with it some other time.” Then, yesterday, when I had some software updates, I typed in my password and didn’t even look at what I was doing, but my pw was rejected. I checked to make sure Numlock was on, since I always use the ten-keys, and it was, so it should have been fine, but nope. The third time, I watched the mask as I was typing, and there weren’t nearly enough characters for my password. Hm. Interesting. I was playing around with VNC and the phone yesterday, though, so I just thought, “It’s somehow got confused; I probably fscked something up when I was messing with E16 the other day, but whatever it is, I didn’t sudo it, so it’s not serious. Next time I start the computer and log into a default Gnome session, it’ll get its options from my login settings and fix itself. I’ll just use the top row numbers for now.” This morning, after I’d shut down the computer last night, it booted to my default Gnome, Numlock on, and everything looked fine. There were software updates available, so after I read everything that looked interesting on Reddit (there’s less every day…it’s turning into Digg, FFS), I started the Update Manager. Asked for my password, and…nope, no ten-keys. They were just dead whether Numlock was on or not. I didn’t recall dumping any vodka into the keyboard last night, so I logged out of Gnome and into an E16 session to see whether it was the keyboard itself, or the WM. Worked fine in E16, so whew–it’s not hardware (can’t buy this keyboard model locally, and I don’t have a spare). I logged back into Gnome, default session, and checked my keyboard settings. I hadn’t made any changes, at least not intentionally, and a cursory inspection of the settings looked okay. Off I went to Teh Great Google, where I found the solution to my problem. Well, after googling again to find out what the hell the guy was talking about (Finnish, didn’t know the English for the Gnome Control Center), I had the solution. I hadn’t updated any core Gnome components lately–just stuff like FF and CUPS, and I think some for one of the multimedia players–but somehow, I replicated a bug. In the Finnish guy’s case, it had happened after an upgrade, which I hadn’t done, but for some reason, the mouse keys accessibility option was enabled. I have no idea how I did it, but I must have because I hadn’t updated anything that would change the setting, and it’s a bug from early 2008, two versions of Ubuntu ago. Anyway, if I somehow manage to do it again and don’t remember the fix, I just need to uncheck the Mouse Keys option in the keyboard preferences…

When I can’t find this post, and can’t find the Finnish dude’s fix again… numlock Num Lock ten keys ten-keys numeric keypad disabled 🙂

Oh yeah, I showed P. my nerd-awesomeness in controlling my desktop with my phone. I thought he’d be unimpressed, but he said, “Wow!” and actually looked at the phone screen for more than 0.28 seconds. Considering that he’s not a “just because I can” kind of guy, and he was also fixing his AV software (which, unbeknownst to him, had not been working for three or four days…eek), that was considerably more than I’d expected! 😉

Even though I harbour an intense hatred for the word “lite”, I decided to give Mocha (VNC client for the iPhone) a shot. There’s a full version that additionally allows right clicking and (I think) Ctrl-Alt-Del, but I don’t much care about right-click for all I’ll use it, and the three-fingered Windows salute doesn’t do a goddamned thing on either my laptop or my desktop, so it’s not worth six bucks or whatever it is. All I wanted, really, was to see whether I could do it.

First, of course, I had to connect to both the laptop and the iPhone from the desktop. Why? ‘Cause I can!  😀 FF on left, iPhone email in middle, and laptop with Nautilus on right.

Then, I had to try the same thing on the laptop. The laptop’s screen is smaller, so I don’t have anything open on it, just Rhythmbox running on the desktop, and the iPhone (making a call to our landline…because I can!)

Both of those were done using Veency (free from Cydia) on the iPhone, and either Vino or Vinaigre (I forget which is the server and which is the client) on the computers. I use that because it comes with Ubuntu (and it works fine).

I initially had some trouble getting Mocha to connect to the desktop, but that was my own fault. I forgot that the last time I used it, I set a password because I had some stuff I wanted to do on the desktop, but P. wanted to sleep and my “clicky” Keytronic keyboard (which I will never give up) bothers him when he’s trying to sleep, so I took the laptop out to the living room and set a password on the desktop so I wouldn’t have to authorise every time I wanted to open a connection. Mocha was doing its best, but I was entering the wrong password. Oops. Once I entered the correct password, I had no trouble at all.

VNC isn’t exactly lightning fast (for anything), but even with 32-bit colour, it’s okay for the laptop at 1280×800 resolution on wifi. I’ve confined VNC to local connections for now because that’s all I ever use and there’s no point in allowing outside connections unless I intend to use them, but I probably will over the weekend, just to see whether this will work over something as slow as Edge. I know I won’t be able to keep the 32 bit colour, and it’s gonna be slooooow because there’s no 3G here, but…meh, it’ll still be fun to do, and Dave probably understands enough to be impressed. He won’t know VNC, but if I tell him I’m controlling my home computer with my phone, he’ll get it. Dan might, too, if he happens to turn up (at least he’ll pretend he knows WTF I’m talking about…hehe). Laptop being controlled from the iPhone, with Nautilus and Audacious playing “Shambala” (Three Dog Night). The blue buttons on Mocha are kinda ugly, but the paid version is the same, and this is free, so hell on the buttons–I just won’t look at them except to use them. The iPhone’s screen is rather small, of course, but Mocha does flip to landscape, and using a combination of pinch-to-zoom and dragging the screen around with my finger, it’s quite do-able.

Desktop controlled by the iPhone, playing Lady GaGa on Rhythmbox. I left it in portrait mode, but it would flip if I turned the phone. I initially had this set for 8 bit colour, but then decided to try 32 bit. It works, and on wifi it’s not unbearably slow, but it did run the iPhone low on memory. I’m thinking that has something to do with 2720×1024 resolution and 32-bit colour. When I first had it on 8 bit, it looked ugly, but functioned just fine.

Anyway, it was fun to see whether this would all work, and although I can’t imagine I’ll ever exactly need it, it’s still interesting, and cool to have. I told P. this morning about controlling the phone with the computers, but I didn’t tell him I can control the computers with the phone, so my plan is to wait until we’re in the kitchen, then start Rhythmbox with the phone (from the kitchen, my desktop is in the bedroom), pass it to him and ask him to skip forward a song or two. He’ll probably just look at me like I’ve got fifteen heads, since he’s not familiar with using the iPhone, let alone using it to control a computer running an OS he doesn’t know at all, but it’ll still be fun to see what he says. Why? Because…I…can! 😛

I was poking about Cydia this morning and came upon Veency; a VNC server for the iPhone. I use VNC between my desktop and laptop sometimes, if I want to use the desktop, but can’t (for some reason) sit at my desk, so I thought I’d check it out for the phone, just to see how it works, and it’s pretty goddamned cool. Useful…I don’t know yet. Cool…very definitely! 🙂

My main Springboard screen:

Pandora, playing Telemann from my Baroque station:

Mail accounts, and I even replied to P.’s morning message using my desktop’s keyboard instead of the phone’s. He said, “That’s my geek grrrrl!” (High praise from him!)

Teh Google in Safari:

WordPress iPhone client:

It’s pretty simple: left click is touch, right click is home button and middle click is lock/unlock. I haven’t played with it for long, but I’m sure I’ll find some use for it. I have to be at the phone to authorise the connection, but I suppose I could remember to do that if I put the phone on the charger during the day. That way, when I get a text, I wouldn’t have to heave my bulk out of my desk chair and walk over to read it. I guess it would also be useful when I’ve begun typing an email message on the phone and it starts to get so long that typing on the phone keyboard isn’t fun anymore. I could do the same by saving a draft, logging into email and then finishing the message, but that doesn’t help if I’ve started it in whatever that app is that allows me a landscape keyboard where I can type and then send to mail. Even if it’s not useful to the point of “gotta have”, it’s still fun to be able to control the phone from the computer. I think there are a couple of VNC clients in the App Store that allow one to control a computer from the phone, but they’re fairly expensive (+$20), “lite” (Jesus H. Christ, how I hate that spelling) versions would be so crippled that they’d just piss me off, and I’m not sure I’d use one enough to warrant paying that much. Maybe…I guess I’ll just play with the server and see how many times I think, “Damn…wish I could do this the other way around!” I guess it might be rather useful if I’m playing music from Rhythmbox on the desktop and decide I want to change the playlist, or just skip ahead one song, or something like that. Dunno…we’ll see, but for now, I’ll just play around and see what happens! 🙂

“Since the article doesn’t specify whom the ‘security person’ works for, it’s hard to say what authority the pilot has”.

I know you tried, but you still made the Grammar Nazi very sad. I’m proud of you for attempting to use “whom”, but if you don’t know how to properly use a word, then it’s a good idea to simply avoid it; substitute something you do know. Correct usage (i.e. usage which would not make me cringe) would be, “…for whom the ‘security person’ works…” If you should ever find yourself in a situation where you have the words “whom” and “for” and would like to use them in a sentence, but aren’t certain where they ought to go, just remember Donne, or even Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls. If a 17th century English poet or a 20th century American writer don’t do it for you, and you need something a bit more modern (and tasteless), try Metallica. Whether you choose to avoid the word or not, for the love of all things grammatical, stop putting the “for” at the end of the sentence! I don’t care whether some modern American usage website says it’s somehow okay to end sentences with prepositions such as “for”, “at” and “to”; it makes me sad and makes you look like an illiterate fool. It’s even worse when you try to use a semi-formal word like “whom” along with it, so just…don’t. It’s not at all difficult–watch…

• Since the article doesn’t specify for whom the “security person” works, it’s difficult to judge the authority of the pilot. (Look ma–no cringing!)
• At whom was the shot directed? (If you end a sentence with “at” I will immediately think of Jeff Foxworthy, as in, “You might be a redneck…” Do you really want that to happen?)
• I don’t know to whom the book belongs, therefore I am unable to return it to its owner. (Double whammy–I even got the possessive pronoun correct. No “it’s”!)

I know…pathetic. I couldn’t help it, though. I think I’ll do my own so I can adjust the position I the text, but for now…heh. 🙂

P. sent me a bunch of photos he’d taken for a client in Chile. The camera they have at the office isn’t exactly a Canon Mark III, and they were all taken inside, in the shop that has the lights up on a zillion-foot high ceiling; the shop that is set up for human beings with fully functional vision, working on gigantic locomotives, not for photographing them (or bits of mysterious equipment shoved back into corners). They were all very dark, he said, so he asked me to lighten them a bit. No big deal…adjust the levels (or curves, if appropriate), maybe boost the saturation a little if bright colours looked a bit washed out, save and send ’em back. I didn’t even need Photoshop for it (I gots teh GIMP sK1Llz!) I thought perhaps if they’d all been taken in the same place, and the subjects were similar, I could just run a batch process on them…except I don’t know how to do that with GIMP. I know how with P-shop, but couldn’t be arsed to reboot to icky-picky ol’ Windows  for something simple like that. I know GIMP can do batch processing, and I know it works from a CLI, but I wondered about a GUI, just out of curiosity. It turned out that his photos were unsuitable for batch processing anyway (too many different subjects of different colours), but I was still curious, so I looked for a plugin or something for GIMP. There is one called David’s Batch Processor that looked like what I wanted, so I downloaded the source and tried to install it. I have g++ and thought I had the GIMP headers to compile plugins, but when I ran the makefile, it wouldn’t compile. I didn’t bother reading the errors because P. asked me to re-do the photos (said they were still too dark**) but after I finished with them, I opened the makefile in gedit, just to see whether I could find the problem.

The first line in the makefile:

# all our Makefiles are lovingly handcrafted by our semi-skilled technicians

Hehe. Made me smile…”lovingly handcrafted”…”semi-skilled technicians”. I like nerd comment-humour. ♥

Turned out that I didn’t have the GIMP dev headers after all (I was sure I’d installed them at some point in time) and that’s why the plugin wouldn’t compile. Yep, that’ll do it! Once I got those, the plugin compiled just fine, and now I have a GUI for batch process actions in GIMP. Yay, me! 🙂

** I replied to P. and asked whether he was sure it wasn’t just his monitor because although the originals were indeed a bit dark, they looked fine on both of my monitors after I’d finished, and if I’d booted the laptop to look, they’d have looked even lighter (voice of experience). I re-did them for him anyway because I know him and I knew there would be long-suffering, “Why can’t you just do what I asked even if I know nothing about photo editing?” sighs emanating from his office, but whilst I was working on them, I got another message from him, saying he’d forwarded them to Adalberto and that they looked fine on his monitor. The reason made me laugh most heartily…P. was offered a new monitor a year or so ago, but refused and kept the one he had. Why is that funny? Just last weekend, I finally managed to convince him to retire an absolutely ancient CRT that he’d had here for…oh, if not eight years, it was close. The poor old thing was on its last legs, and was just plain burning out. The rich, dark red of his DG website looked like dried-to-brown blood, and what should have been bright white was grey. I’d tried once before to switch him to an LCD, but he complained because he didn’t like the way his games looked, and then one day, his XP BSOD’d, so he blamed the LCD (he knew better, of course, and so did I after I was the one to get stuck cleaning approximately four pounds of crud from his heatsink and fans) and went back to that godforsaken old CRT. This time, I think he’ll be okay with the LCD, and I hope so, because I not only dragged that huge, five-ton CRT downstairs, but I moved a bunch of plastic storage containers and boxes, and put it waaaaay in the back. My thinking was that if I put it out of sight and made it a pain in the arse to retrieve, he’d be too lazy to bother with it unless he absolutely could not stand the LCD (do I know my husband? YES!) Anyway, that’s what amused me so much about the photos at work today. He’d been offered a new monitor and refused, choosing instead to keep…his ancient CRT, which is burning out. He’s refused a new DVD drive, and the HDD I offered so he could have a second drive for storage is still sitting on the shelf in the spare room. He once told me he’d like to learn Linux, so I said I’d set him up with a dual boot, making XP the default and a KDE distro look enough like XP that he wouldn’t have any trouble finding stuff. When I asked him to backup his stuff and defrag so I could resize the partition and create space for Linux, he said, “Not right now,” and that’s as far as he ever got. What is it with that man and old computer stuff? Offer me something new and I’m all over it. Him? It’s like he’s married to the goddamned things or something! 😛

L. sent me a link this morning to a screencap of some browser benchmarks that he’d done, then to the site where he’d done them. Of course, I was curious (he knew that would happen), so I ran tests on all of the browsers I have installed on my ageing desktop. By far the fastest was Chromium, which appears to be reporting as Chrome (like Google Chrome), but really isn’t; as I understand it, the Chromium OSS project was founded by Google, then they built Chrome on top of it, but it’s no longer OSS, though Chromium is, and someone’s taken over development. At just 0.2, Chromium is still pre-alpha and missing a number of features (you can’t even switch tabs yet), but compared to FF, Opera and Epiphany on Linux, it’s quick, so I hope they keep at it! This is FF running in Safe Mode so that all of my extensions and other customisations are disabled. With everything enabled (that includes my 21 active extensions), it shows down from 305 to 264.

Again curious, I booted to XP to see how the browsers I had stacked up. I forgot to test before updating Opera to the latest version (had 9.06 on there), and I had to install Chrome again because I’d uninstalled it before (updater annoyed me) but I did still have IE 6 (shows you how often I use IE), so I tested that, then installed IE 7, and then IE 8 (yes, I had to fucking reboot after every one of them, but it was in the name of science!) Doesn’t matter to me that 8 is still in beta because I’ll never use it anyway. Again, FF is in Safe Mode; I don’t have nearly as many extensions in the copy on XP as I do the one I use daily on Linux, but there are still quite a few. FF with extensions enabled slowed from 383 to 335. I still wouldn’t give up extensions; that’s perhaps the thing I like most about FF. Safari 4.0 beta kicks everyone arse here, even the browser touted as a “speed demon”, Google Chrome.

Even though FF doesn’t come out on top no matter what, I do think I’ll continue to use it for my day-to-day browsing. I usually use Safari for what little time I’m booted to XP, but I think it’s worth it to me to give up speed in return for the ability to customise practically everything. I got Safari to “non-annoying”, and it is fast, but in FF, I can highlight a word and translate it to or from several languages, I can highlight a word or phrase and look it up on Wikipedia/imDB/whatever, highlight a non-formatted URL and go there with just a click, and capture an entire page instead of just the visible area. Advertisements are blocked, so are scripts, Flash doesn’t play unless I tell it to play. For some sites, I have custom stylesheets that are easier on my eyes, and for others (like Flickr), I have increased functionality (hate typing out HTML tags), and I can remove individual bits (or even a single word) from web pages if they bother me, even if they aren’t advertisements. Ubiquity is a pretty cool extension, too, if I could remember more often to use it. Anyway, it was interesting to see how the various browsers stacked up, and also interesting how poorly IE performed. Not surprising, just interesting. 🙂

I don’t fuss with my hair. There was a time when I did, but I was in my 20s then, so what did I know? It’s still curly because that’s how I was born, and it’s still long because that makes gravity do most of the work of controlling The ‘Fro. I wash it when I take a shower, condition it when I’m not too tired or too lazy, and that’s it beyond an occasional blow drying if I’m in a hurry. I do, however, have to switch shampoo once in a while. I don’t know (or really care) why, but if I don’t, The ‘Fro becomes even more rebellious (this is potentially more frightening than you might think). Having fought it for all these years, I know when to give in; I just switch for a while, then go back to what I always use.

I was a bit distracted, talking to L. on MSN when I was at Wally World on Sunday. P. was in a hurry, so when I remembered that I needed shampoo, I told him to just go grab something for dry or colour-treated hair (mine’s not dyed, but colour-treated hair is typically dry, so it works). Being a guy who would wash his own hair with a bar of Irish Spring if I didn’t get actual shampoo for him, he is understandably confused by the dizzying array of different brands and different types. Being a guy married to me for so many years, he did the most logical thing he could think of…he looked for something pink. He said he found this, in a bright fuchsia bottle, so he looked and it said, “shampoo for long hair.” He thought, “Well, that’s what she’s got–this oughta do it!” and dropped it in the cart. I love guy-logic. 😉

I didn’t look then, but when we got home and I was putting stuff away, I read the bottle. The stuff is Clairol Herbal Essences, which I’ve heard of, and this one is called “long term relationship.” The print at the bottom says, “With a fusion of red raspberry and satin. Our love grows longer.” Oooo-kay. I don’t want to buy it dinner or move in with it, I just want to wash my damned hair, but the name is vaguely clever, and it smells like raspberry, so…whatever. Then, I got curious about the marketing and read the back of the bottle…

Now it gets really strange. The back of the bottle reads:

I’ll help your hair live a long, healthy life

Long story short, I’ll strengthen your hair against split ends and breakage. So, get lost in your length with my velvety fusion with red raspberry and satin. It lavishes every inch of your hair, protecting against damage and leaving it so luscious, you’ll love it up and down, all around town.

Use me: massage me into your hair. Lather up. If you long for more, rinse and repeat.

Jesus. Is it just me, or does that sound more than slightly lascivious? Seriously…c’mon. Satin? Satin is a smooth, shiny, man-made fabric, usually polyester, maybe with nylon, popular for weddings, proms, lingerie and office Christmas parties (also lingerie at office Christmas parties). Okay, so marketing-speak, meant to call up visions of shimmering, satiny locks, cascading over smooth, elegant shoulders. Yeah. Well, that’s not gonna happen with The ‘Fro, but whatever. The rest, though, is just fucking weird. “Lavishes every inch of your hair”? Number one, “lavish” is an adjective, not a verb; and two, it’s abundantly clear to me that I’m supposed to make a mental connection to the word “ravish”. WOO-HOO–ravish me, you sexy bottle of water, surfactants, preservatives, colour and fragrance! Let’s see…”get lost in your length with my velvety fusion?” Goddamn…is it getting warm in here? I actually think I read that in an erotic novel once. “Massage me into your hair”? Um…how ’bout I just wash with it. “Love it up and down and all around town”? Ack. Don’t whores charge extra for that? “If you long for more, rinse and repeat”? I can state with authority that I have not once in my life “longed” to wash my hair. I do it because if I didn’t, I’d look like a homeless person and feel like I had fleas. I feel fairly confident that I won’t long for more.

I know that sex sells, and I’m certain this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, aimed at a demographic of 20-somethings, but Jesus Christ, I just wanted shampoo, not soft porn! 😛

Aw, not this shit again! I think it was last…September or October of last year before our sites got hit with that stupid injected code, but I know there were people getting hit with it as far back as August. AFAIK, it’s not exactly “malicious”, as in “will email goatse to your boss, cause your computer to explode, then screw your wife, steal your car, shoot your dog and burn down your house” (it’s a spam script, I believe), and removing it is simple enough–just find the file that was modified at a time you didn’t modify it, and search for the script (which will always have the site name tagged on the end, like “bettatude.com”, so it’s easy enough to find the string), then remove the code and upload the clean copy, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’ll be back again in something between a day and a couple of months, and there’s not a goddamned thing we can do to stop it as long as our sites are still on IX’s old servers. At first, IX blamed the users for having infected computers, then they blamed user-set directory permissions, and basically, they’ve blamed everything except the actual culprit…permissions on their own servers. The code is on their servers, and as I understand it, can hide in image files, and it injects a script into users’ files on WordPress, phpBB, and others. When someone views the page and the script runs, it calls up the code on the server and does…something. I don’t know what, since I’ve never let it run on a Windows machine at all, let alone one without proper protection, and the couple of P.’s users who’ve encountered it and been aware of the fact (his users aren’t exactly tech-savvy) have had the whole site blocked by their anti-malware. Whatever it does, though, it’s not supposed to be on the goddamned server, and if they’d even so much as properly secure their goddamned servers, at least the only ones affected would be the users whose own computers were already infected. They don’t, though; I think it’s that they have permissions set up somehow that if someone has access to one account on a server, they can access them all. Dunno, but I think that’s what I’d read. We users can’t just change permissions on every file to read-only because that will break the site’s functionality, but that’s what we’d have to do in order to avoid being infected. P. said that when he called and told them he wanted to be moved to their new servers, they said they’d do that (the new ones are more secure and don’t have the permissions issue), but that’s going to mean both of us making backups of absolutely everything on all of our sites, then putting it all up on a new server, and waiting for DNS to propagate. Kind of a pain in the arse, but I’d do it anyway…if P. would get his stuff backed up so we can make the move. In the meantime, all I can do is watch the little NoScript icon in the lower right corner of FF every time I go to one of my blogs or even the main page (which is actually only a joke with javascript “Click to enter” buttons that avoid the mouse so you can never “click to enter”…not that there’s anything to enter) and if I see that anything is being blocked, then I know I have to clean that godforsaken script out again because only bettatude.com itself is allowed to run scripts. Anything else that tries is blocked, and it will show that it’s blocked, and I know that when I look, I’ll see that “add-filter-block.info” is trying to run a script. FFS…IX used to be a really good host, but it’s been months now and they’ve still done nothing to fix it except for recommend that users change their FTP passwords. Christ, how many times am I going to have to change my fucking password before they grab a clue and remember that they’re supposed to be a professional web-hosting company???

Well, the affected pages are cleaned of scripts. Time to go change my FTP password…AGAIN.

Gawd…IX apparently sucks so bad that there’s an entire blog site on WordPress devoted to its suckage. Fuuuuuck.

A sunny Friday when it’s just a bit too cold to want to roam outside, but the only real “work” I have to do today is a few water changes and fixing the space bar on a laptop that’s popped its clip. I’m sitting here at my desk, looking across the room at my laptop, and thinking about installing the alpha version of Jaunty on it. It’s barely past 0900h, so I’ve got the whole day ahead of me. Hmmm…

Pros:

• I’d get to use new software, which is always fun.
• I’d get to see the new themes in action (though I have put them on Intrepid on my desktop).
• I’d get to mess around with customising a default install to make it look and work the way I want.
• I’d have time and a non-critical computer to figure out the way to turn off the new “awesomeness” in Epiphany, and any other new features I decide I don’t like.

Cons:

• Since I’d be doing a clean install (could upgrade, but I like neat, clean installs with no chance of “leftovers”) I’d have to re-install stuff like my Nautilus actions, and my T-bird address book, FF bookmarks (and more importantly, extensions), in addition to backing up all of the stuff in my /home (since I’m a dumbass and never have got around to putting that on a separate partition). None of that is difficult or even particularly time-consuming, but unless I make a list, I’m sure to forget something, and the time at which I’ll discover that I need (a particular function) will be at 0300h when I’m too drunk to trust myself with “sudo”.
• It’s still in alpha, and although I don’t care much about instability because it’s only my laptop, not my “mission critical” desktop, that does mean a lot of updates as bugs get fixed. Again, not difficult, and no big deal if I’m sitting in the living room, or even sitting up in bed, but it’s a pain in the arse to type my password with one finger if I’m lying in bed with the laptop on the little table beside me. My own fault for a long password with all of letters, numbers and special characters, but still a pain in the arse, and even though it doesn’t pop up or nag (I’m lookin’ at you, Windows!) I can’t stand to see the “Updates available” icon sitting in the Panel, silently accusing me of being too lazy to click and type a password.
• Having to comment lines out of menu.lst if there are updates to the kernel. That happened when I had…um…I think it was the Hardy beta on it, and it confused P. because there were so many entries in Grub that he couldn’t see the XP entry at the bottom of the list, and didn’t know he had to arrow down, so he thought, “Her Linux wiped out my XP,” and ended up doing a restore from the Vaio backup partition (the only entry he could see besides the Linux ones), which of course wiped out any personal stuff he had on there, plus it ultimately failed, and XP wouldn’t boot anyway (“incomplete install”) until I fixed it. His fault, I suppose, since I’d have known what to do if he’d taken five seconds to show me the damned screen, but it’s still a pain to have so many entries.
• It won’t take long to do the install–under half an hour–but it will take longer than that to make it look and work the way I want, and that will cut into time I could be spending doing fuck-all on a sunny Friday. There’s no way I could leave a default install just sitting there, being all default-y, so I’m looking at…oh, probably a couple of hours total before I’m completely satisfied.
• Ubuntu always Just Worksâ„¢ on the laptop, so that won’t tell me anything about what I really want to know, which is how well an un-fucked-with PulseAudio will handle sound on my desktop with various applications. It’s always Just Workedâ„¢ on the desktop, too, but I somehow managed to make my master volume control…uh…”go away” in the panel applet, and since it does still work (and I still have the multi-channel volume control for VLC and PulseAudio’s master for everything else) I don’t want to mess around too much with it. If my desktop doesn’t have properly functioning sound, and I want music (and I will!) then all I can do is connect speakers to the laptop and SSH to the desktop (or use earphones on my phone…meh), but the laptop has only crappy two-channel sound, so I can’t even duplicate channels to 5.1 for mp3.

Okay…more cons than pros, and now that I’ve spent approxmiately 20 minutes deliberating, I think I’ll leave the laptop with Intrepid for now. We’re supposed to get scattered showers all weekend, and it’s not going to be really warm (only 11C on Sat, 17C on Sun…crap), so maybe I’ll change my mind if I don’t feel like going outside on one of those days. Maybe I’ll find something else to do–haven’t attempted to break anything on my iPhone in a while–and just wait for the beta. Dunno yet. 😀