CNN…where journalism goes to die. Seriously, Mairi, “than/then”? Have you ever taken an English class above third grade level? I guess I could understand (though not forgive) it if…you know…if writing wasn’t your job. When they give you a byline, there’s almost an expectation that you at least mostly know what the fuck you’re doing…
You have got to be kidding me.
“…but I am yet to try it…”
Oh, are you? I’m so very pleased to make your acquaintance, Yet To Try It. A most interesting name…you’re not from this area, are you?
I’ve heard a lot of eggcorns and malapropisms (hell, we had the ruling Monarch of Malapropisms for a two-term president), but Christ, that doesn’t even make any sense. “I have not yet (attempted/tested/sampled) this, therefore…I have yet to try it.” Wrong verb, idiot.
I’m bored, I’m irritable, it’s raining and I wish I still smoked. 😀 Did make my desktop look kinda cool yesterday with a new theme. When I first saw it, I thought, “Meh…not bad. I’ll get it and try it sometime,” but then I had a goddamned hard time getting the icon set installed (the Deviant Dumbass hosted on DA and I kept getting a corrupt tar), so now I’m using it mostly for spite. Oh, and also because I extra-hate it when people host their theme stuff on shitty DA, which forces me to allow approximately five thousand scripts in order to download. Doesn’t get them any ad views from me, though (assuming that’s what they want) because I can’t see ’em, scripts or no scripts. Fuck ’em.
I don’t get it. First, I have Screenlets running under Python because they look cool and I can see the displays from across the room. Then, when top tells me that Python is hogging CPU to the tune of thirty-plus percent when I have nothing else running except for Gnome itself (I even shut down Pidgin), I close all Screenlets, kill Python, and switch to the “lightweight” option…Conky. Conky reports 25-27% usage…why? According to top this time, it’s either Xorg or nvidia-settings, and seems to be mostly nvidia-settings (polling GPU core temp, presumably, but that seems awfully frequent??) Okay…so let’s kill Conky and restart all screenlets except for the sensors screenlet that is set to display the temp output from nvidia-settings; the rest just use output from sensors, and of course, Python. That drops CPU usage to 9%, so an “aha” moment; it’s got to be nvidia-settings. Now, what happens if we start the GPU core temp screenlet? Answer? Nothing. CPU usage stays between 9% and 10%. Start Pidgin…no change (once it’s loaded). Now, start Firefox 3.5. No big change; CPU usage goes 10-11% and stays there. Nautilus causes a significant jump, but that’s because Nautilus can be a pig, especially with very large directories and several mounted partitions, all of which I have, and I know that, so I don’t run it unless I’m actually using it. This doesn’t make any goddamned sense. There’s nothing in my conkyrc that should be causing high CPU usage. If anything, Screenlets should be more resource-intensive because they run atop Python, and have a “pretty” graphic interface, not just a text interface like Conky. I even tried removing the GPU information block from conkyrc, but that didn’t change a thing–still stayed at 27% (also worked like shit, since wget was refused over and over for external IP information, but that’s beside the point). So, it would seem that if I let Screenlets start on login as they do now, but stop them all, and restart them, I get the CPU usage report I would expect to get, but if I don’t restart them, I’ll get an extra 10-20% usage, and that’s backed up by the output from Conky (and by top in all cases). WTF?
All updated and landscape-y, freed from its prison, and now without ugly icons for Contacts and Notes. I still can’t get passwordless SSH to work and I don’t know why because it appears that the keys get generated and saved, but I can live with that because it won’t kill me to type a password. The script still mounts it; just brings up a window, asking for the password. Someday, I might be inspired to figure it out, but not now. My Hello Kitty and Bird SMS themes don’t work anymore, and Pink Notes only sort of works because of the new landscape options for both, but I can tolerate boring SMS until someone makes a theme that works landscape, too, and for all I use Notes, as long as the icon isn’t ugly, I’m okay with it. I love the copy and paste, and although it’ll take a little while to get used to typing landscape with three fingers (I can’t type with my thumbs, so I’ve modified the “cash register keyboarding” that used to get me through working Friday, Saturday and Cheapo Tuesday nights at the only convenience store near the movie theatre). Took me ages yesterday, and some creative syncing, but I have all the stuff I wanted on here, none that I don’t, and the apps I don’t use but still want to keep are in iTunes if I ever do want them again. Yay. I even found Flickit for uploading my atrocious “Flickr-ing from the woods” photos, since whatever I used to use (don’t remember the name) didn’t work with 3.0. I could just email it, but that doesn’t allow tagging, or adding to sets, or assigning permissions as anything but “public”.
I have scripts for copying and moving to a different directory, I have scripts to open files in gedit as me or as root, a script for searching, a script to enqueue files in Audacious, a script to replace the spaces in a file name with “-” (I hate spaces in file names because they need special attention if I want to do anything with them in CLI), scripts to mount and unmount ISO images and scripts to upload files to my web space via FTP. There’s a “default package” of Nautilus scripts, but most of it is stuff that I’d never need or want to do, so I just have the scripts I’ve collected over time that do the things I use often. After a visit to Gnome-look this morning (looking for interesting wallpapers and themes), I have the mother of all multimedia scripts. 🙂
Description:
I chose the option to copy it to ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts, but it can be used with Nautilus Actions as well. The only requirements are zenity, ffmpeg and imagemagick, all of which I had already (probably had most of the optionals, too), and it needed my password to adjust the “windows-behind” default behaviour of zenity in my distro, but it works quite well, and although I could already do the stuff this script does, it’s much easier to right click, go to scripts, choose “avconvert” and set my desired options than to type in a terminal or start an application; this cool little script does it for me. If I lose it (put a copy of the tar in Software in my /home) or forget anything about what it does, I found it here, and if that page goes away and I can’t download it, I chucked the tar up here.
I was sure I had this somewhere, but couldn’t find it, so I’ll put it here where I can find it, and if I can manage not to clutter up my Jaunty with stuff I installed “just to see what it does”, I’ll be able to use it for Karmic in October unless I decide to just upgrade rather than a clean install.
Backup installed applications:
dpkg –get-selections > installed-software.log
Save the installed-software.log somewhere it won’t be overwritten, or on a thumb drive or something.
dpkg –get-selections > /backup-directory/installed-software.log
That’ll do the same thing, but automatically save it in your backup directory, so I could just put it on a storage partition…and probably lose it amongst my other stuff. Heh.
Restore from backup:
dpkg –set-selections < installed-software.log
deselect install
Wish there was something like that for Windows except for imaging that I have to fuck around with and put on DVDs because I don’t have enough room anywhere else. The last time I attempted (I think I used Ghost), I went through the whole process only to have what should have been the last disc…fail. I really need to clean up my XP installation because there’s a shit-ton of stuff on there that I never use (because I don’t use XP for anything but PS and video conferencing anymore), but I hate the thought of sorting through all of the shit that I never use in case there’s one thing I might actually use someday. Meh…hell with it. A little better with GIMP and if I can figure out how the hell I’m supposed to make Empathy do audio/video (it’s supposed to support it, but be goddamned if I can find the option) and I’ll just wipe the whole goddamned XP partition and use the extra space for Ubuntu.
Anyway, I digress (at which I am practically a professional). As powerful and useful as I know rsync to be, I can never remember how to do the stuff I want to do with it, and be goddamned if I’m going to sit there and read through the man pages (no time, no inclination), so to transfer a large file…
rsync -ahP –stats user@host:path/to/humongous/file
Optional
–partial –progress (partial allows resume if the transfer is cancelled, and progress shows a progress bar)
“Nice closeup work with a P&S.” I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be flattered or insulted; what a backhanded fucking compliment! Why didn’t he just say what he meant? “You did okay for having such rubbish equipment.” Unless he’s calling me later today to give me his credit card number and PIN, I guess he can probably go fuck himself. Sure, I could do better with a good DSLR and some nice lenses, but I can’t afford even the goddamned body, let alone the glass, so I’ve got what I’ve got, and if it doesn’t suit you, then just look up at the top of your browser window, and you’ll see a button with a left-facing arrow on it. That’s your back button, and if you click it, it’ll take you back whence you came, away from content that isn’t good enough for your discerning taste. Who the fuck do you think you are–Ansel Adams? I’ve seen your stuff, and you’re just adequate…that fancy Nikon isn’t helping you one bit. Of course you had to chuck in a little “bokeh”, too, just ’cause I love that term so very much. Oh, and the poems you use in captions? They suck like an angsty teenager wrote them–you could get a job as a Hallmark hack. Douche.
Heroine. Christ. Just past ten in the morning and it’s already 29-fucking-degrees, which makes me short-tempered at best. Illiterate idiots. I hate you all. I’m gonna go fix the wireless on my laptop, since Windows decided I no longer have a wireless connection yesterday…right in the middle of a video conference with J., which was fun whilst it lasted. She was cleaning her kitchen and cooking for the kids, I was doing water changes. Neither one of us had time (or particularly likes to) just sit and type.
I finally got annoyed enough at the “upgrade available” message that I backed up my DBes and upgraded WP to the latest version. I can’t remember the last time, but I usually download the upgrade and do it manually. This time, I said fuck it and went with the auto. Forgot whether I was supposed to disable plugins (I think I was), so I didn’t bother, and…everything went fine. So, yay–backups (well, DBes if not files, but it’s not like I have anything truly critical) are done, upgrades are done, TDK is already sent, and it’s not even 0930h yet. I’m taking the day off, I think, and I was considering going to BL’s house to chase bugs, but until I figure out how to turn off the goddamned sun, I’m not all that enthusiastic about going outside later than seven in the morning, so…dunno.
I’m glad I exercised some restraint and didn’t add everyone and his dog whose names I recognised to my FB. Not that I think I’m particularly interesting myself, but I do at least attempt to participate in coversation and occasionally insert a little humour into my updates and content, which is more than can be said for a few of my FB friends (Christ, I hate using the word “friends”…some are friends, some are only acquaintances). A few of them post amusing stuff, or interesting content, or at least reply if you write on their walls, but some are just…boring. “(insert name) is going to work, then coming home to watch TV.” Zzzzzz. “(insert name) is making lunches, then going to bed.” Zzzzzzzzzzz. Fifty photos from a weekend at the beach, three of which actually have people in them (none are portraits, just snapshots where there’s more background than person), and the rest are essentially the same view of the same place. God-damn, can’t wait to check out that gallery! Don’t even get me started on anyone who uses a photo of the kid(s) for the profile, and writes only about the kids. Goddamned mommy-bloggers. For the average person, life is generally boring and fairly repetitive, but surely they must think something or see something or read something interesting, even if work/kids/home responsibilities don’t necessarily allow us to do something interesting. Otherwise, why even bother with something interactive like FB…why not just create a page and write out the daily schedule? Hell, why not create a bitch blog that nobody wants to read? 😀
I did eventually get aMSN working yesterday, but this morning, it crapped out again. A bit of googling revealed that it might be a change in the protocol; that MS doesn’t want anyone to use non-MS clients to connect, and they also want to “encourage” people who do use the MS client to update to the latest version, so they make changes in the protocol and non-MS clients can’t connect until they get caught up. Anyway, it probably would have been possible to get aMSN to work again, especially since I updated to the latest SVN version (beta, but apparently stable), but then just for the hell of it, I decided to try Pidgin. At first, it didn’t work, either (did yesterday), so I made a quick check in the Ubuntu forums and the suggestion there was to install pidgin-pecan from the repos, which isn’t “MSN protocol” but rather “WLM protocol”. Once I did that, it worked fine, and since I’ve now discovered that there’s a FB chat plugin for Pidgin (Skype, too), and I found an icon pack that I like because the defaults are fugly, I’m switching to Pidgin, at least for now. The FB chat was really the selling point; I did find the way to pop-out the stupid tiny window in the corner of the FB page, but it’s still crappy, and it takes ages before I notice new messages (or even who’s online) down there anyway (assuming I’m even logged into the web site at all; I do a lot of FB on my phone).
Now, the Ironing Faerie had better stop messing with IM stuff and get to work! 😀
Ah, FFS…another WP update? No time now–maybe tomorrow!