New Laptop #2

Blake

Well for those of you I don’t talk to on a regular bases here is a little update:

I have graduated from Canadore College and received my “Computer System Technology – Networking Program”. So that’s it, I’m done. Not so much. I have deiced to go back for another 3 years for the “Computer Programmer Analyst”. So this now brings me to the reason for this post, I got a new laptop. 🙂

I knew my old Dell 640m just wasn’t going to cut it for the new program. So I order my self a Dell Studio XPS. Here are the specs:

  • Intel® CoreTM i5 540M (2.53GHz/3MB cache)
  • Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit
  • 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3
  • ATI HD5730 Mobility RadeonTM
  • 15.6 inch display (1920×1080)
  • 500GB5 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
  • 8X DVD+/-RW Slot-load Drive
  • 6 Cell Battery
  • 2.0MP Integrated Webcam
  • 802.11n

Doing the comparison to my old one, this is quite the beast.

The new one doesn’t excite me as much as the old one does. I plan on running Kubuntu on the old one, and get to enjoy having a real web test server again. Also want to play with some of the new KDE environment stuff as its been a few years since I have used it.
If you have ideas of things I should post please comment below!

OpenSUSE – You suck

Blake

This semester at school we have a class called “Second Operating System”. Just like you would expect, we are learning Linux. Unfortunately, the teachers have opted to go with OpenSUSE as the primary OS to teach. First day was to do the setup on either our laptops or the desktop machines the school provides. I opted to install OpenSUSE in Sun’s VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is a great desktop test environment mostly used by programmers to test programs in. It supports Linux and Windows as a gust operating system allowing you to install operating systems on a base Windows install. This means that I don’t have to dual boot 2 operating systems.

After installing openSUSE, first thing I wanted to do was install the Addition tools that come with VirtualBox. This will allows the mouse to flow between the virtual machine and the actual machines desktop freely. It also allows the display to run in “Seamless mode”. Seamless mode run the guest OS right on top of the desktop of the machine seamlessly.

The problem with this is you need to install the kernel source headers. Not a big deal with most OS’s but with OpenSUSE, she wasn’t going to go willing. In Ubuntu when you go to install the kernel source headers it asks you if you really want to do this then enables the correct repositories. OpenSUSE says it doesn’t exist then you have to go hunting for how to do it. So I did what ever n00b does and went to Google and tryed finding a site that shows how to install the files that were required.

Turns out that if you go in about 5 menus deep in the crap thing they call a control panel, there is a spot where you can add the repos. It gives you a nice list of about 20 repos that if you didn’t have any prior Linux knowledge you would have no idea what one to add. So I added all of them.

I ran a repo update using there crappy application manager. It took 30 minutes to check all the repos and 6 of them failed. Explain that to me. :S So after using the search feature found exactly what I was looking for. After that everything installed and ran fine, accept a few things:

  1. Seamless mode doesn’t work
  2. Internet is up and down (no other VM does this)
  3. Installing any application is the biggest pain in the but ever

To conclude, I hate OpenSUSE. I don’t recommend using it at all. They make doing anything twice as difficult as it should be. Why make it so hard?

Vinyls

Blake

Over the last few days I have fascinated my ears with the listening pleasure of the vinyl records. 33RPMs that my parents have had in out crawl space for as long as I can remember. I’m not saying like one box full, but 6 large containers full of great music all on a 12 inch disks read with a diamond needle pumped through a amp and into my ears.

Most people would describe the audio quality is less then perfect to my generation. Even my parents are looking at my funny, but it just can’t beat the character of these old records. The sound of the vinyl, clicks, pops, hiss and the small short I have in the turntable, adds to the greatness of this forgotten technology.

Currently I’m listening to Boston – Don’t Look Back. I have gone through only about a dozen of these and I unfortunately keep finding ones I like, so progress is slow through the first container. 😛 I have included some pictures I have taken of the record and the stylus playing the record.

Click on the picture for the full size.

Needle Needle

The Pirate Bay

Blake

The story behind the all famous, The Pirate Bay, has caused some interest lately. The Pirate Bay is a BitTorrent site that index’s many torrents all over the world. Everything thing from operating systems to games, they have it all. Currently, they are in court fighting for the freedom of indexing these torrents.

The site is frowned apon for hosting small files that allow users to connect to a tracking server. The tracking server holds records for all the users that are downloading (Leaching) and give out (Seeding) the file. The problem with this case is TPB cannot be pined for actually distribution files because there not. Other people on the internet are; average users like you. The chances of this case actually turning in favor of the Hollywood system is very slim. For the full articly please visit NBC.ca. And for the behind the sences story please Click Here for the owners blog.

I died… Okay maybe not.

Blake

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I’m sure a lot of you have wondered what happened to me. Well there is one simple answer, school. Unfortunately any spare time I have is spent doing projects and working on homework. If you want to keep track of my doings, I am on Twitter which is on the left side of my blog or you can hit follow on my profile.

Christmas this year was fantastic. You can see all of the pictures that were taken from my family get together on Facebook. After all the probelm with my desktop computer I have finaly figured out how to get it running stable. Turns out all along it was a issue with the OCZ ram. New ram for Christmas and BAM, away she goes. Second gift I recived was a new monitor. It’s nothing fancy, Samsung 21′ widescreen display to replace my 21″ CRT monitor that has seen better days.

Other then that, that was my Christmas. Like I said, the best way to keep track of me is through Twitter and if you need to contact me best way would be by e-mail here. I will be posting another tutorial soon using the old PS2 Head set into a Guitar Pre-Amp and the mic input on World of Warcraft.