hey all,
I just got back from my quick trip into Tokyo to visit Sengakuji, which is a Buddhist temple where the 47 ronin and their lord are buried. It was pretty cool, but there was not too much to see aside from their graves.
I've solved part of the problem of my storage issues. I can now read/write files to my Linux partitions from Windows, and I can access one external HDD (the Ext2 formatted one), but not the other external HDD, for reasons that I cannot quite figure out.
In keeping with my current infatuation with all things Conan (thanks to the game Age of Conan), I've been reading the original stories by Robert E. Howard. They are so old that they are in the public domain, and you can read them at this site.
In other news, yet other comrade in arms has fallen: one of the ALT's that I've been hanging out with a lot is heading back to the US to pursue a law degree. It feels like they are dropping like flies. Best of luck.
Cheers,
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Updates
hey all,
It's been a while since I posted anything here. This is somewhat because I've been trying to figure out what to do with my computer. I'm really dissatisfied with my Linux partition, but until now I've been using it as my main repository for movies, music, pictures, and even all my school work going back to high school. Uploading pictures to this site usually means that I have to log on to Linux, which I have come to avoid the way I used to avoid logging on to Windows. For now, there will be no new pictures until I can figure out how to get my Linux files accessible to Windows. Why not just start storing everything on Windows? Space. I have two external hard drives, one formatted in Ext2 and one in Ext3, on which I store almost everything. Most of the space on my Windows partition is taken up by games and by the operating system itself. Once I can get my external HDDs accessible by Windows, then I'll be in the clear.
A possible silver lining to this cloud has appeared in the form of Google OS, which will be released later this year. This will be based on the Linux kernel, like Linux and Apple's OS X, but designed for people who spend a lot of time on the Internet, such as myself. Avid readers will recall that part of my growing dissatisfaction with Linux lately has been my inability to get sound from streaming internet videos, but this seems to be part of a larger problem with the new sound server PulseAudio, which also screws up sound files stored locally on my internal hard drive and cannot keep up with the audio track of video files stored on my external hard drives. I know these are Linux problems because they don't happen at all in Windows.
That out of the way, not too much has been going on that is really worth writing about. I hosted a second indoor rock climbing event, which was really fun. I met a German guy who is an amazing climber and he's been teaching me some new ways to belay and also how to lead climb, which I tried once in the US, but was too freaked out by to try again.
We've had several more Earthquakes that I've felt or been woken up by, but still nothing major.
I started playing my first MMORPG, Age of Conan, which is lots of fun.
I have one week left in my vacation, but I think I might only take one trip into Tokyo to see some more sights related to the 47 ronin.
Cheers,
It's been a while since I posted anything here. This is somewhat because I've been trying to figure out what to do with my computer. I'm really dissatisfied with my Linux partition, but until now I've been using it as my main repository for movies, music, pictures, and even all my school work going back to high school. Uploading pictures to this site usually means that I have to log on to Linux, which I have come to avoid the way I used to avoid logging on to Windows. For now, there will be no new pictures until I can figure out how to get my Linux files accessible to Windows. Why not just start storing everything on Windows? Space. I have two external hard drives, one formatted in Ext2 and one in Ext3, on which I store almost everything. Most of the space on my Windows partition is taken up by games and by the operating system itself. Once I can get my external HDDs accessible by Windows, then I'll be in the clear.
A possible silver lining to this cloud has appeared in the form of Google OS, which will be released later this year. This will be based on the Linux kernel, like Linux and Apple's OS X, but designed for people who spend a lot of time on the Internet, such as myself. Avid readers will recall that part of my growing dissatisfaction with Linux lately has been my inability to get sound from streaming internet videos, but this seems to be part of a larger problem with the new sound server PulseAudio, which also screws up sound files stored locally on my internal hard drive and cannot keep up with the audio track of video files stored on my external hard drives. I know these are Linux problems because they don't happen at all in Windows.
That out of the way, not too much has been going on that is really worth writing about. I hosted a second indoor rock climbing event, which was really fun. I met a German guy who is an amazing climber and he's been teaching me some new ways to belay and also how to lead climb, which I tried once in the US, but was too freaked out by to try again.
We've had several more Earthquakes that I've felt or been woken up by, but still nothing major.
I started playing my first MMORPG, Age of Conan, which is lots of fun.
I have one week left in my vacation, but I think I might only take one trip into Tokyo to see some more sights related to the 47 ronin.
Cheers,
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Some Linux Complaints
hey all,
So in the past, I've been highly critical of both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. I've been using various flavors Linux since 2007, mostly Fedora. I'm currently running Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas. It seems like ever since Fedora Core 7, my experience with Linux has been more or less down hill. Fedora 8 was nice, but I could never get wireless to work. With Fedora 9, wireless finally started working, but I lost the ability hear sound in my internet browser, and KDE 4 (a disaster and a hazard compared to KDE 3.59) was manditorily included in the distribution. Fedora 10 and 11 continued this pattern.
In my current installation, which I updated just the other day, sound still doesn't work for the internet, and now I can't have my headphones and my headset plugged in at the same time, plus the sound feels a little choppy. I've also lost the ability to scroll and select items by tapping on the touchpad.
Why can't these people deliver on a simple promise to provide a useable alternative to Micro-tosh? Almost from the beginning, I've had Blackbox lean running as my desktop environment for Windows Vista, and I've had a really good experience with that. My webcam and headset are easy to use, I can watch videos on the internet with sound, and I don't suddenly lose my ability to scroll or select items by tapping on the touchpad.
Cheers,
So in the past, I've been highly critical of both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. I've been using various flavors Linux since 2007, mostly Fedora. I'm currently running Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas. It seems like ever since Fedora Core 7, my experience with Linux has been more or less down hill. Fedora 8 was nice, but I could never get wireless to work. With Fedora 9, wireless finally started working, but I lost the ability hear sound in my internet browser, and KDE 4 (a disaster and a hazard compared to KDE 3.59) was manditorily included in the distribution. Fedora 10 and 11 continued this pattern.
In my current installation, which I updated just the other day, sound still doesn't work for the internet, and now I can't have my headphones and my headset plugged in at the same time, plus the sound feels a little choppy. I've also lost the ability to scroll and select items by tapping on the touchpad.
Why can't these people deliver on a simple promise to provide a useable alternative to Micro-tosh? Almost from the beginning, I've had Blackbox lean running as my desktop environment for Windows Vista, and I've had a really good experience with that. My webcam and headset are easy to use, I can watch videos on the internet with sound, and I don't suddenly lose my ability to scroll or select items by tapping on the touchpad.
Cheers,
Friday, March 13, 2009
Computer Update
hi all,
No one but the hardcore techies will care about this post, because I wanted to rant about Fedora 10 w/ KDE 4.2, since I spent Tuesday afternoon updating my laptop to it.
KDE 4.2 is a vast improvement over KDE 4, but 4 was a piece of trash: it had a crappy and buggy start menu, it lacked many of the features that KDE 3.5 came with out of the box, etc. Some of these features have been rebuilt in 4.2, and some very cool new ones have been added (more later).
Fedora 10 itself is pretty: it boots up about 3X faster than Fedora 8, has built-in webcam support (Fedora 8 required you to patch and re-compile the kernel to use a webcam), and looks like it has better wi-fi support (personally, I never got wireless to work on Fedora 8).
KDE 4.2 has basic Semantic Desktop support through the Soprano, Strigi, and Nepomuk packages. Most people are familar with Semantic notions in the form of tags stored on mp3 (or in my case, Ogg-Vorbis) music files, and users of Gmail are familiar in the form of Labels on emails. What the above packages allow you to do is spread this ability to all file types: I can add tags/labels like "semantics," "verbal classes," and "Greek" to my linguistics PDF files, "Amsterdam," "Leipzig," and "Sils-Maria" to JPG files of my trips. Further, because these tags are stored in a machine-readable form, I will be able to search for them using my standard file manager. Aside from the cool stuff above, this also leads to a flatter file directory structure: multiple tags can be associated with a single file, while a file can only reside in one directory.
I leave for Atlanta tomorrow, and my pile of stuff to pack seems to keep growing.
Cheers,
No one but the hardcore techies will care about this post, because I wanted to rant about Fedora 10 w/ KDE 4.2, since I spent Tuesday afternoon updating my laptop to it.
KDE 4.2 is a vast improvement over KDE 4, but 4 was a piece of trash: it had a crappy and buggy start menu, it lacked many of the features that KDE 3.5 came with out of the box, etc. Some of these features have been rebuilt in 4.2, and some very cool new ones have been added (more later).
Fedora 10 itself is pretty: it boots up about 3X faster than Fedora 8, has built-in webcam support (Fedora 8 required you to patch and re-compile the kernel to use a webcam), and looks like it has better wi-fi support (personally, I never got wireless to work on Fedora 8).
KDE 4.2 has basic Semantic Desktop support through the Soprano, Strigi, and Nepomuk packages. Most people are familar with Semantic notions in the form of tags stored on mp3 (or in my case, Ogg-Vorbis) music files, and users of Gmail are familiar in the form of Labels on emails. What the above packages allow you to do is spread this ability to all file types: I can add tags/labels like "semantics," "verbal classes," and "Greek" to my linguistics PDF files, "Amsterdam," "Leipzig," and "Sils-Maria" to JPG files of my trips. Further, because these tags are stored in a machine-readable form, I will be able to search for them using my standard file manager. Aside from the cool stuff above, this also leads to a flatter file directory structure: multiple tags can be associated with a single file, while a file can only reside in one directory.
I leave for Atlanta tomorrow, and my pile of stuff to pack seems to keep growing.
Cheers,
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