I installed Jaunty this morning, and like every time, I was nervous because I’m always afraid I’ll get too confident someday and end up doing something I can’t undo that will fuck up my files so badly that I can’t get them back. This time, I even hacked an extra 20GB off my XP partition because I use it so seldom, and my Ubuntu partition was getting crowded. Not only that, but I put /home on its own 60GB partition so that when upgrade time comes around again, I won’t have to copy all of my stuff; I can just install the new OS and tell it where to find my /home, complete with all of my user configuration files. I did a clean install this time, since I’d upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid (which went okay, considering all of my customisations), and it went very well. I’d read a couple of horror stories (okay, more like rants) about PulseAudio in Jaunty, but it looks like I got away with it again. All I had to do was change the default 2-channel to 6-channel, just like I did before. After I finally remembered to enable the mediabuntu repos (it’d been so long that I forgot!) and installed libdvdcss2, I tested a DVD with real 5.1 surround sound, which was just fine, and also an mp3 with just stereo, to make sure it was duplicating channels to give me 5.1, which it did. Dual displays were no problem, either, after I’d enabled the Nvidia driver (the FOSS driver did give me video and the correct resolution, but wouldn’t do Compiz or TwinView). The default orange Human theme still isn’t my thing, but the wallpaper was nice this time (Intrepid’s was some gawdawful cave painting-looking thing), and although I had a custom Ubuntu Studio last time, I’m okay with the default US theme (plus my Neutral cursor–god, I love that theme) for now. I’ve left desktop effects enabled as the default (not full-on everything Compiz does, but some), though I usually end up turning it off in the end. Since I’m a dumbass, I forgot that my Conky config file was hidden, and in /home, so I didn’t copy it, but that’s all right; I have one similar enough, and I’ll add the GPU stuff and extra mount points to it later; it won’t take long to do. Oh, yeah; I also have to delete the custom configuration for my Weather screenlet because it appears to be confused. I almost don’t want to copy all of my /home files over because my OS is so nice and neat, and my /home so uncluttered. It’s my stuff, though, and even if I don’t need half of it, I’ll keep it just like I do always. Perils of a PC packrat!

Oh, and when I forget and have to look it up again, if PA is giving just two channels and needs to be changed manually (I think there’s a GUI now, but I never looked), then…..

cp /etc/pulse/daemon.conf /etc/pulse/default.pa -t ~/.pulse/

This is the “easy way”, which works for my sound card. Never had to try the “hard way”…don’t want to!

gedit ~/.pulse/daemon.conf

Find these lines, uncomment default-sample-channels and change the 2 to 6

; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; default-sample-channels = 2

Restart PA and good to go! 🙂

It’s not AT&T’s anymore (okay, so technically it is, but at least I don’t have their stupid carrier name up there), and I can even protest Charter’s 90s-vintage speeds with a cute little snail icon for wifi! I’d probably like a stock iPhone, but it’s far more awesome when I can customise. 🙂

I made my backups and freed some space on my XP partition so I can make Jaunty’s bigger and separate my /home, but between water changes, Flickr, talking to J. on MSN and pissing around on FB, and the fact that I was too tired to trust myself with partition editing and commands that begin with “sudo”, I didn’t get it done today. I wanted to do it tomorrow, but apparently I have a flyer project for the glow tournament. P. wanted it done yesterday or this evening, though he didn’t tell me anything about it until he was on his way to bed, so I certainly didn’t get anything done tonight. Maybe I’ll have time to to both…in addition to the three tanks I wanted to overhaul. Yep, that’ll be my day off. I’m taking a shower and going to bed…I’m tired just thinking about it!

What do I have to do to make the notification go away?!?! It’s driving me INSANE! Must I don tutu, rubber boots and hockey helmet, and recite Beowulf from memory as I dance flamenco around a fire under a full moon? Go away, little 1-in-a-red-circle. I READ EVERYTHING–what more do you want from me!?!?!

Most of this shit gets marked read and sent directly to the trash without my ever seeing it, but once in a while, one slips through. I sometimes read them, just out of curiosity. This is slightly more sophisticated than a Nigerian 419 scam, but not by much. The subject line was “Last Email Notification” (I don’t recall getting a first!), sent to “undisclosed recipients”, from some Yahoo! address in Hong Kong (with numbers, even!), and there are people who’d actually fall for it? “You have been selected due to the face that you have sent more than 3 texts/email messages in the last 2 months”? Um…yeah. Me and anyone with a computer or mobile phone. Seriously…that’s sad, but some greedy/desperate mofo will fall for it.

Dear esteemed recipient,

You have to confirm your win by sending an email with your full name,Address,Mobile phone number and your winning code.You have been selected due to the fact that you have sent more than 3 txts/email messages in 2months.

Endeavour to Call +393273337926 and ask for Mr.Stafan Smith (Claims Director) to confirm your Two Million United States Dollar win.

Quote code: 09PAD when calling to your claims director.

Or when sending an email response,send to: andreafrancesco77@yahoo.com.hk

This is an opportunity you cannot afford to missout on.Get back to us Now!!!

Enalotto Award Team.

1990, when Radio Shack still had cool, interesting stuff and wasn’t just full of RC toys, crappy HP computers, replacement batteries and a Sprint kiosk. Oh yeah, and the replacement foam “headphone socks” that I need because earbuds never fit properly. If you wanted the latest tech back then, you could find it at Radio Shack (though chances were good that it’d be huge and have a battery the size of a small suitcase!) I like the disclaimer, “Cellular service available in most major cities,” and back then, you’d want to check because those fucking phones were at least $1200-$1500! Interesting to note that it’s in large, easily legible print, unlike AT&T’s for the iPhone.

2008-09, when Radio Shack is no longer cool (and indeed, many of them have closed), cellular phones are a whole lot smaller and do a whole lot more. Nineteen years ago, I don’t imagine anyone but the sci-fi nerds and computer geeks would even have dreamt of this, but now, it’s so commonplace that even D. has an iPhone (okay, so he doesn’t know anything about how it works, but he does have one)! 🙂

T-Mobile HTC G1 “Google phone” (it’ll make you smarterer, connecteder, funner, and all kinds of other “-ers”!) This would be a much cooler phone without the clunky-looking pull-out keyboard. I think the G2 is supposed to have an on-screen, though.

Apple iPhone 3G (this is my favourite of the “there’s an app for that” commercials, though I like them all…generally do like Apple commercials except for the smug ones that don’t feature John Hodgeman). AT&T’s disclaimer on this is in tiny light-grey-on-white print at the bottom, but it says, “3G not available in all areas.”

I’m glad I’m neither older nor younger because I’m at the right age where I’m old enough to remember 8-track tapes and the magic that was Pong, but young enough to adapt to new stuff as it’s developed. I have seen for myself how far we’ve come in what is really a very short time. So…yay for being middle-aged? 😛

OMFG! Hahahahaha! I just know this is gonna piss off the militant feminists, but that only makes me like it all the more. Besides, it’s fucking FUNNY. Apparently, there’s a “tamed down” US version (this is the UK), but I didn’t bother looking for it because this one made me snort my coffee.

I just found the US version; it’s not tamed down, it’s just plain lame and not even slightly amusing, let alone actually funny. Why do we never get the really funny, irreverent commercials?

I love Stanza. It’s not only a way to combine two of my favourite things–my iPhone and books–but also a way I can lie in bed and read that requires even less energy than holding open a book. The phone is smaller, lighter even than some paperbacks, I can see the whole screen without holding my arm up as I must to see both pages of an open book, and it doesn’t require as much light as reading print (P. complains about my 7w bulb, though I fully intend to ignore him until he can sleep without snoring, grinding his goddamned teeth and kicking me, which will never happen). Stanza also has a “night mode” with white text on a black background that’s really easy on my eyes in a darkened room, and “touch to turn the page” is even less effort than turning an actual, physical page. The book selection is good–even the free book selection is good if you like classiscs (and I do)–plus it can read various file formats. Amazon’s Kindle might use e-ink, which is supposed to be easier on the eyes than a backlit screen, but damn, that thing is ugly, plus it’s expensive ($350 just to read books?), and I already have an iPhone. Besides, I can’t stand the name…Kindle. Eeeuch!

I think I watched the movie American Psycho (at least most of it), and I have read the (dead tree) book, but it’s a favourite, so I also had it in PDF format. Don’t recall where I got it, but I had it. I was reminded of it last night as I was reading an article about Amazon removing ratings for books that involved homosexuality (and therefore removing them from any search that wasn’t specifically for the particular book). I could never read a whole book on-screen at my desk, and although I probably could at my laptop, it would be much more convenient to read it on the phone. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get Stanza to “see” the PDF, and I wanted something that would remember my page (PDF on the iPhone won’t), so I checked the web site. They have a free desktop client that converts (whatever file format) to an ebook format, but of course they have only Win and Mac versions. I tried installing the Win version with Wine, but it choked on the Java installation. Not even for this would I boot to XP, so I went looking for a Linux-native solution and found Calibre. Calibre not only coverts to ebook formats, but it allows you to enter extra information, specify cover images, and runs as a server so you can download the ebooks over wifi from a local computer. I suppose I could have figured out how to use it in spite of the fact that the instructions I found said it’s “not too intuitive”, but since I had instructions, I used them, and I’ll put them here so I’ll remember…

Using Calibre (it’s not too intuitive I’m afraid)

• Install (get it here)
• Use “Add Books from multiple directories” to get it to load your existing eBook collection. Now, it’ll handle nearly all formats that I’m aware of, and will pull them all into 1 library. PDF’s, LITs and PCRs all mixed and treated the same; you’ll see how well this works now…
• Set your default output to EPUB (button in top right area). This is the standard that Stanza works best with
• Clean your library up:
  • Set up free ISBNdb.com and LibraryThing.com accounts. Calibre helps with this. It’s worth the minor effort; with these u get a very (the best I’ve seen) intelligent assistant to help you ID your book’s ISBN, and from there u can get the cover art
  • For each book, press E to edit metadata, then use button “Fetch metadata from server”. You will be given a list of likely matches to your book title and author. If not, you need to check the title and author in this same screen – they may have silly filename characters that need editing. You’ll figure it out easily enough
  • Once you have the metadata, click “Fetch cover image from server”. Select cover, and close with “OK”
  • Do for all books, and your books will be nicely completed with author, title, publisher, date, cover, and in most cases a synopsis (blurb)!
  • Consider adding tags; if you do this, they will appear as subjects in Stanza iPhone. Nice for separating fiction classes, non-fiction subjects, hobbies & interests, etc. Note that from the above metadata, stanza will automatically group authors so don’t tag them.
• Now you need to covert all your books: Select the lot, make sure you have chosen ‘EPUB’ as the output, and click “Bulk Convert” button. Just accept the box that comes up as blank. Now, here’s where calibre comes into it’s own; even tho you had mixed formats, you will end up with all books having both the original format, and the desired EPUB format, BUT your library will still look like a single list. Nice! Gone are the days of storing multiple directories for different devices.

Getting your books into Stanza:

• This is surprisingly easy. Do not try to open each book in Stanza desktop and then ‘share’ to your iPhone. Takes time, covers get lost, and some LIT files will not open. Rather:
• Use settings in Calibre (minute hammer button in top right area) to check the ‘Content Server’ is started
• Make sure your iPhone and PC are on the same WiFi network
• In Stanza iPhone, choose ‘Online Catalog’, then the ‘+’ button in bottom right
• Choose ‘Add Stanza Catalog’, and enter a name (eg My PC library) then
  http://192.168.1.2:8080/stanza
  The red text needs to be the IP of your PC on the wifi network. [add a link sometime on how to find this]
• Now download each book – 1×1 I’m afraid unless someone can suggest how to do this faster…
• That’s it; a complete library, nicely organised, on an awesome reading device. Forget Kindle, forget WindowsMobile’s head start.

I didn’t see Intrepid on the supported distributions, so at first, I tried the source install, but it gave me some Python error that I don’t remember. Then, I tried the binary install that’s supposed to be for Jaunty, and it worked fine.

It put its shortcut under “Office” in the menu, which I suppose is at least fairly logical. Now I need to go and find my other non-free ebooks that I’ve never got around to reading because they’re on my desktop and I hadn’t bothered to copy them to my laptop. Not right now, though; it’s time to get some work done!

Edit to note that converting one book I had in RTF format nommed the hell out of my CPU and took so effing long that I finally cancelled the job, but once I converted it to PDF with OO.o, it took only about a minute to convert to epub, so…note to self, convert RTF to PDF first! Yeah, yeah…I’m going to get to work now. 🙂

Christ. Yeah, it’s Monday. It’s bad enough to see this in some blog or a random comment on an article, but these days, it’s not at all uncommon to see this mistake made in what should be a reasonably respectable publication, or at least a reasonably literate one. I hate it–it makes me cry because it’s so clear to me that the person who wrote (whatever I’m reading) doesn’t read. Stop fucking up simple homophones, you idiots; the fact that it sounds the same doesn’t mean it’s spelt the same, and it most certainly doesn’t mean that it’s the same word. Pick up a book once in a while, dumbasses.

Poring over a book. Poring (there is no “u” in this word) means, “to read carefully with the intent to remember.” It’s like studying, but not something one would necessarily do for a class or in preparation for some sort of test. If this cute little stuffed whatever it is (I have no idea) had a brain, he’d be reading this book with the intention of recalling its contents at some point in the future, for whatever purpose, or perhaps for no purpose at all beyond, “I want to remember.” Apparently, though, many people read the way this stuffed toy reads–without a brain–or just don’t read at all.

Pouring over (whatever object). This is the one with the letter “u” in it. The word “pour” means “to cause to flow out”, and probably the most common usage is for liquids. Water pours over Niagara Falls, I could use someone to pour a double vodka over ice for me right now. Rain can pour down from the sky even though it’s falling in drops instead of a stream, large numbers of people can pour from the doors of an arena after a concert…the point is that this word has nothing whatsoever to do with reading! I suppose that one could say, “She talked rapidly; words pouring from her mouth,” but used to refer to speech in a figurative sense is the closest “pouring-with-a-u” ever gets to reading. This is water pouring over a pretty young woman in a bathing suit. See? No books involved.

Jesus wept for the future of literate humanity.

Images courtesy of a GIS for “God, people are so fucking stupid.”

What the fuck is wrong with these people?! This is a PSA from some group calling itself the National Organization for Marriage, and it would seem they hate teh gays. I think the storm clouds in the background added a nice “doomsday” touch, but maybe next time they could put supply-side Jesus on a velociraptor and add some flames of hell. You know–since teh gays will ultimately be responsible for the end of days. Christ. Whether or not two women or two men somewhere–even right next door to me (not that it’d happen here)–get married in absolutely no way affects my own life or my own marriage. I’m still just as much married to P. as I have been always, and I’m not going to suddenly wish I was married to a woman just because a couple of dykes want the same tax breaks (if one could call them that) that P. and I get for being legally married in the eyes of the government. Well, wait…women pick up their socks and don’t wear ratty bathrobes, right? Hmmm… Anyway, what the sweet fuck business is it of theirs as long as everyone involved is an adult capable of giving legal consent? Religion doesn’t “own” marriage anyway; it never did. Marriage began as a way to forge bonds between families, and in some places in the world, that’s still true. Non-Christians can get married. People who don’t even go to any church/synagogue/mosque/whatever can even get married. Hell, atheists can get married! Here, in the “Christian nation” (that’d be the one that can’t even manage to cough up Easter as a goddamned holiday), marriage is apparently something different. How do Adam and Steve threaten their freedom? They’re just as free to have a happy marriage or a miserable one, just as free to stay married or get a divorce, and just as free to teach their kids that their God hates fags. What is it with the Christian groups that just can’t stand the thought of anyone, anywhere…being happy? Just mind your own damned business and go read your book of fairy stories, you fucking loons! I respect your right to say anything you want, but Jesus, do you have to be so stupid about it? You make the rest of us look bad.

As long as I’m already half-pissed off…

Jesus H. Christ, I hate iTunes. Also Windows. I’d tried to update an app last night through the App Store, but the update failed, and it refused to even try again unless I did it through the iTunes store. I sighed, but since I didn’t have much of a choice and had to use iTunes anyway, I got the brilliant idea to do a full-on Apple-approved backup of my phone. I booted XP and fired up iTunes. I can’t remember the last time I used it, so of course it wanted to update to the latest version. Mine wasn’t that old, so I said “later” because I just wanted to make a backup, and I know that Windows can’t do much more than move the mouse pointer without a reboot, which I didn’t want to do. I connected the phone, fired up iTunes and checked everything I wanted to back up, then clicked Sync. I know it takes a while, so I just left it and took some laundry downstairs. Came back, checked and it’s copying iBird Plus. That’s a pretty big app, and transferring over USB, so I didn’t think too much about it, but ten minutes later, the progress bar hadn’t moved. I tried just closing iTunes, but it refused to close and just returned “not responding”, so I had to kill it. I waited a few minutes, then restarted iTunes to try again. This time, I sat and watched it. “Backing up Lisa’s iPhone”…fine, but then it started with the apps, and again, choked on iBird Plus, only this time, it didn’t even get as far as it had before. I left it for ten minutes, and again, the progress bar hadn’t moved at all, so again I had to kill it. Finally, I thought, “Fuck it–I’ll do the goddamned update and suffer the reboot,” so I downloaded an enormous update, letting it update anything it wanted to update. Installed, rebooted (fuck, I hate Windows), and tried again. Twelve minutes…progress bar hasn’t moved at all. I know iBird Plus is large–couple hundred MB–but twelve minutes, no HDD activity, and it hasn’t moved at all? That jus’ ain’t right. This time, when I tried to close it, it did at least tell me the sync would be cancelled, and it did close on its own rather than having to be killed, but then it wouldn’t start again at all. That left me no choice but to reboot. This time, iTunes starts, but doesn’t see my phone. Windows Explorer does, but not iTunes. Nothing has changed except iTunes. It sees my backed up apps, so it knows it had an iPhone at one point in time, but nope…doesn’t see it. I’m willing to do one more reboot, and if it works, I’ll just try to back up everything except iBird, and if that works, then I’ll either try iBird again, or (more likely) just say to hell with it. If rebooting doesn’t work and that POS iTunes still doesn’t see my phone, then I’ll just say to hell with it and thank a random deity that I don’t have to use Windows or iTunes more than once in a while. The phone will be fine until the OS update comes in June–I don’t fucking care anymore. Fuck you XP, fuck you Apple, and especially, fuck iTunes. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself; I know that attempting to do anything more complicated than a video conference on MSN with Windows will just ruin my whole day. I know it, and still, I keep hoping.

Fantastic! This time, it does in fact, see my phone, but insists upon copying iBird from it to iTunes, which is exactly what made it choke in the first fucking place. I quit. If I somehow manage to fuck up iBird, I’ll just uninstall and re-download it with the goddamned phone. iTunes makes me wish I believed in a hell, so I could wish Apple would burn there. I hate that “our way or no way, so if it doesn’t work, you’re basically screwed unless you can come up with the cash for a Mac.” Fuck you. At this point, I’m not sure I’d take a brand new MBP if Steve Jobs himself turned up at my door to hand it to me personally. Still love my phone, though. 😉

Update: I finally did get it to sync, but the app that refused to update still wouldn’t even go through iTunes (said it couldn’t be verified or authorised or something), so I came up with my own, very simple solution…I deleted it. It wasn’t anything important enough to go through this much bullshit. I’m not fucking touching iTunes again until I have to upgrade the OS, and even then, I might wait for the jailbreak…depends upon whether the new features in 3.0 are all I need, or whether I need stuff that only jailbroken phones can do.

“Liberated” from FML:

Today, I was flirting via text with a coworker. Things started getting heated, and I wanted to send her a sexy picture. I asked if she had any suggestions. She said, “Your nuts!” She meant, “YOU’RE nuts.” I sent her a photo of my junk. I offended a co-worker with incriminating evidence. FML

HAHAHAHAHA!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Kids, this is why English class and reading are important. Hug a Grammar Nazi today! HAHAHAHA!