Lots Going on – Packed into Three Days of Goodness

October 11th, 2009 Thomasso

Besides the homework and other daily chores, I have got my fingers in a lot of pies right at the moment. Some of my things to do went well, while others did not. But in all, so far, at the halfway mark of the holiday weekend, things are getting checked off and competed which is nice.

Computer Happiness: Probably the most tenuous and life altering plan for this weekend is Beta testing the new upcoming Ubuntu 9.10, code named, Karmic Koala. So far it is showing great promises, like the super fast boot  up time and shut-down. I was a little nervy dealing with the new to log on to my user account, now you must click on your user name and then type in your password. I guess it is better being that you had to type in your user name than your password, but for living with typing for so long, almost six years now, it has become a serious habit. I could easily write a whole post on it, but I’m still finding little bugs, so maybe later on next week. For now, I can say that it looks very promising. And yes, I am submitting my bug reports.

Cram Them Berries: Fort Langley just had its Cranberry Festival yesterday. I was not in attendance because of other commitments like homework and some letters that needed to by sent via email, but I sure heard it. The one time I went over to the market, I saw hundreds of people lining the streets walking around the vendors table that packed the main drag. The town was packed. I think is was a success, so I will wait an see when I talk to my friends who have shops along Glover Road.

Another B&E: My friends house, where I am storing some of my things, was broken into on Friday. They did take some of my things, like some tools, a box full of old vinyl-records, and 500′ of LXR microphone cable, but my friend lost way more than I did. Probably the total value of my loss would be around $400.00, but I have had that stuff for so long so it is hard to say if it is really worth anything any more. I am mad, somewhat, but completely taken back by it. These were things that I have had in storage for well over eight or nine years, so missing them is highly unlikely. But the funny thing is my buddy decided not to bother with phoning the police. Because breaking and enterings are so common in this area the last time this happened the police gave him the story about how they are powerless to deal with it, and that he should take it up with his insurance company. Well, he decide that it was not worth his time dealing with the police, and “if they are not going to fight crime, I will have to.”

This is a common thing I hear as a criminologist, when people get frustrated with high crime rates. I warned him about the usual points of law, mainly that he cannot commit a crime by preventing one. So I had advised him on taking other measures like a fence, lighting, alarms and a dog.

The Power of the Pen: I’ve being asked to take part in a letter writing campaign about taxation and government spending. A group of students from various universities and academic facilities have joined forces to start a three month long letter writing campaign to all levels of governments to fight the decline in services for middle and poor class people, and the sudden hike in funding losses and increased taxation. This should be fun. I have never written letters in this fashion before. I was told that these letters should not be in the form of a protest letter, but rather as from the point of view as a  concerned citizen as part of a larger interest group. Apparently there are over twelve thousand of us?

So, off to get my list of things done. Enjoy the long weekend everyone and happy Thanks Giving!

Posted in Criminology, General, Linux, University classes | Comments Off

Half and Half With Happy Neighbours

September 21st, 2009 Thomasso

First, tomorrow is the Equinox, or the final day of summer and the first day of Autumn, around 2:18pm, September 22, 2009. Normally it falls on the 21 of September, but this year it is a day late. Well, really it is not late, that is the way our calendar works. Our calendar has a lot of bugs in it, so keeping events on track and uniformed is unfortunately impossible to do with it.

Tomorrow, me and some friends will have a little get-together, as we always do, to celebrating the passage of the seasons. I consider these moments true events without the hype and commercialism that most other celebrations go. We have debated this to death, and for better of worse, keeping it away from the mainstream is the better way to go. We try and attend right at the time that it occurs, but sometimes that can be difficult for some as it is either during the dead of night or during work times. For us keener’s, taking time off from work to celebrate it is just one way we keep it going.

This started for me back about 13 years ago when me and a couple of old high school buddies, who were all amateur astronomy buffs, realized that in order to really appreciate the seasons and the start of the new year, December 21 should be the day that we do it.  We managed to keep it going ever since then. One buddy, Richard, even goes so far as to bring his spouse along, so now it has become a family event for swapping stories and having a few drinks, or in my case a good excuse to have a coffee with the old boys. Only a couple of us get together for the other three events, Fall and Spring equinox and the Summer solstice.

Last Saturday I reached the milestone of reaching 10 installations of the operating system Ubuntu-Linux within my neighbourhood. That is “out with the old, in with the new.” Old, meaning Microsoft in this case.

In every case of installing the new operating system it was due to users not willing to pay for the upgrades, and for the most part, their PC machines were old and slow compared to current standards, so the Window$ system would not work properly. There is sort of a consumer dilemma when it comes to buying a computer, that is, when you fork out up to and over a thousand dollars, you expect it to work for more than a year before you need to throw more money at it.  So spending a $150.00 for an entirely new upgraded operating system is a good deterrent for anyone to continue to go along with the scam. And I do mean scam.

“It is hard to justify paying for something that gives me advertising, limited usage and viruses galore—there must be a better way?” my friend Kim said.

When I introduced them to the open source systems, they are stunned. It is like they never heard the word “Free” before. It is through word of mouth that they find out that such a world exists.  And oddly, when they get frustrated with it, or they need some help and get mad, I tell them they could always go back to what they had before, they flat out respond with a “NO—Fix it!”

Special Note: Thanks Diane for catching those errors for me and bringing them to my attention. I hang my head in shame, and guilty as charged.

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Humour, Linux, Photographs | Comments Off

What a day: The case of the Bad LapTop

June 6th, 2009 Thomasso

I spent the better part of today helping my neighbour install Ubuntu on her laptop. She had seen it on another neighbour who I did an install on Ubuntu several weeks ago, so they got together and shared the good and bad points of using Linux for their everyday computer and Internet needs. I was approached and said that I would install it during the weekend when I had time spend.

Initially I told her that it would be a four hour time period, baring any snags that may pop up. After about five hours of fiddling around with a USB stick and booting the operating system from that device, then finally doing the install, I finally made some headway only after to resorting to using a DVD ROM. I should have paid closer attention to what type of optical device she had on the laptop because had I known that she had the DVD writer on it, that would have save a lot of time in the first place. The marking on the DVD carriage were rubbed off from wear. It was an older computer, and fortunately most of the issues that popped up were fixable ones once I got a list of all the hardware components.

Once the operating system was install, then came the tweaking. That took another four hours, and before you knew it, the whole day was done.

I enjoy doing this type of work because I learn some much from it. Every bug that I find and squish makes me better for the next gob. So far I have managed to install successfully Linux on every machine that I have run across, even MACs—yes you can run Linux on MACs too.

For the owner of the laptop, she was very grateful, and was very impressed at the speed and new found life that was brought back into her machine. Before, she was running Window$ XP, and it was hurting. The machine was not worth it to go out and buy software for it, so free was an expectable price for a days worth of work.

She said that the pop-up nag windows, a million virus protection programs and the constant freezing made running the derelict OS simply impossible to use. On top of this, porn and solicitation were a big problem too.

So another happy camper has joined the free world today.

Posted in General, Linux, Software | Comments Off

A Very Good Upgrade (Ubuntu 9.04) and Mums the Word

May 10th, 2009 Thomasso

Looks like Mother’s Day has arrived and everyone will try and either contact their mother, or wish her a happy Mother’s Day. Because of my busy schedule this weekend I may have to forego the phone call until this Wednesday, but I will say this now, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!”

Last night I did the upgrade once I was satisfied that all my favourite programs were still going to work. The release of Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope, actually came out in April, but having learned the lesson the hard way, I found waiting a few weeks pays off as it gives the community a chance to fix most of the bugs that pop up from each “short term” release.

The only big issue I had was loosing my sound. I have to use Pulse Audio software as the ALSA programs seem to have been messed up in the repositories. It was scary at first because of the new format with the audio selectors and configuration set-up, but after about twenty minutes my speakers were pumping out lovely sounds of music.

Jaunty, Ubuntu 9.04 has one of the fastest boot ups I have ever seen so far. It now takes my machine about ten to twelve seconds from start to desktop. These are boot times that only Window$ users can only dream of. Remember, I did an upgrade, so I have a lot of stuff on this box that needs to be started during boot-up, as opposed to a clean install.

Oh, and don’t ask me what a Jackalope is. I have no idea, nor have I ever heard of such animal. Someone said that it was a rabbit with antlers? Go figure….

Posted in Events, Family, General, Linux, Software | Comments Off