Welcome to my kitchen. Today I will create for you a dish called “Hybrid Marketing with a Coulis of Visuals and Nuttiness”.

For the past two years I have been dedicating my time to the creation of a new kind of Marketing. Cooking up new dishes using both existing and newly grown ingredients has been a challenge, but it makes my kitchen smell great and many people smile when they get a first taste.

I am a lover of quality, be it in food or anything else for that matter, and I was not satisfied when looking at the existing marketing model of CPM, PPC, CTR and WTF’s or whatever other abbreviation we can think of. Selling numbers is not what engages customers or future customers in a meaningful relationship with returning customers buying your product or services. I was convinced there had to be more, and there is…now.

It is now possible to have future customers work for you, and then have them buy your products. How? Because they really, really want to and the reward they get is worth it. In the lab environment called StayNomad I have been working in, Team StayNomad has come up with some dishes and strategies that will blow away the minds of traditional marketeers and make them see that there IS a light at the end of the “where-the-hell-is-online-marketing-going” tunnel.

Like any chef I won’t give away the details of my recipes, but you should definitely come and eat in my restaurant if you like new, gutsy, tasty and highly rewarding dishes.

Bon appetit!

written by Ted Sullivan

(Note: I hope these links work. The WSJ can often be stingy with their content.)

When I picked up today’s Wall Street Journal I didn’t think I was going to read a story about the most impressive and gutsy baseball players on the planet. Then I watched this video and almost fell out of my chair. The WSJ front page human interest piece was about “Beep Ball” a version of baseball for the blind.

Yes, baseball for the blind.

Jim Abbott pitched in the big leagues despite being born without a right hand. And Cal Ripken played in 2632 consecutive games…

But these guys are unbelievable.

And I thought I was unlucky for being right handed.

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

Tramite questo link è possibile trovare la distribuzione che serve per tutte le architetture.

This line from the “THINK IT OVER” column of the HT Editorial Page, Tuesday, 22^nd June made me, well, think. It goes:

A hobby is only fun if you do not have time to do it.

Leo Beenhakker

Moreover, on the same page there is a write-up by Charlie Brooker – Leisure pleasure. An extract of the same goes like:

“ I’m a jammy little bastard, because as time’s gone by I’ve somehow managed to convert each of my interests into a job. …

          The only trouble is that when your hobby becomes your job, it ceases to be our hobby anymore. And now I’ve run out of hobbies. …”

read full article here

would you risk your life to save your dog? this article made me cry… really heart touching moving… this very brave and loving woman jumped into a very cold lake in Chicago to save her very sweet dog…

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-dog-rescue-06-may06,0,6421432.story

Comix es un sencillo lector de comics o novelas gráficas, bastante simple pero cumple su función .

Ingresa en consola:

sudo apt-get install comix

Y listo! Algunas capturas:

Tiene una bonita biblioteca:

Up The irons!!

Hay algunas aplicaciones que no se instalan, simplemente te dan el ejecutable y ya. Muchas veces prefiero tener todas mis aplicaciones en el menú de gnome para poder usarlas de igual forma con GnomeDo. Es muy sencillo, solo debemos ingresar en consola:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/miaplicacion.desktop

En /usr/share/applications puedes encontrar todas las entradas de menú de los programas que son instalados en Ubuntu, con este comando creamos uno nuevo (cambia miaplicacion por el nombre de la que vayas a incluir). Una vez hecho esto se nos abrirá gedit, y debemos copiar y pegar allí lo siguiente:

[Desktop Entry]

Name=mi aplicacion

Comment=Aplicación que destruirá el mundo

Exec=sudo miaplicacion

Icon=/usr/share/apocalypsis.gif

Terminal=false

Type=Application

Encoding=UTF-8

Categories=Application;Utility;

En Name pones el nombre del programa a incluir, Comment es el comentario que aparecerá cuando pongas el cursor sobre el ícono, Exec es la ruta al ejecutable, Icon es el ícono que usarás en el menú, Terminal indica si quieres que primero se abra una terminal y de ahí ejecute el programa (true) o si quieres se ejecute directamente sin terminal (false), Type es el tipo de aplicación, Enconding es el tipo de codificación que usa tu programa, y Categories es el submenú donde irá tu programa. Las opciones para esto son:

Utility;

AudioVideo;

Office;

System;

Network;

Graphics;

Development;

Settings;

System;Settings;

Guardas el archivo, lo cierras y en tu menú debe aparecer la aplicación lista para correr (si escribiste todo bien). Y eso es todo! También hay un modo gráfico haciendo click derecho en  aplicaciones, y luego en editar los menus:

Up the Irons!!

Journalism is in trouble. How to save it? Perhaps journalists really should “unleash their inner Stewart” as BuzzMachine.com blogger Jeff Jarvis suggests. But what does that mean?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart certainly has a different approach to journalism, or rather reporting, since Stewart denies that his show is anything more than comedy. It’s not fair, not balanced, not often serious, and not objective. But it’s definitely gutsy, as anyone who watched his interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer saw.

Whether The Daily Show is journalism or not doesn’t matter to me. I want to be a journalist, and I want to be a good journalist. To me that means being unafraid to point out inconsistencies or to step on toes.  It means making objectivity a method, not a goal, and it means connecting with my audience. Those are all things that Stewart seems to accomplish effortlessly everytime I watch his show.

Most importantly journalism needs to be gutsy Stewart-style to get through these uncertain times. How we create, fund, and consume news is changing. To soldier on journalists really may have to “unleash their inner Stewart.”

Maximum PC has a nice write up on the upcoming release of Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackelope”. As I’ve said before, 9.04 is looking really nice with the info I’ve seen so far, and this article makes the case even better that the next release could be one sweet little collection of code. As soon as I can see a notice that Ubuntu 9.04 has reached beta status I’ll make sure it gets posted for all to try, and I’ll snag it and give it a nice little test so I can give you guys an early look through my peepers. Thanks to Nanci, who spotted the article on Google News and made sure I saw it. (You could have blogged it yourself, sis. I wouldn’t have minded. )

For those of you who are running Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, the Ubuntu devs have announced that they will stop providing “security and critical fixes” for it on Saturday, 18 April. This date is eighteen months after Gutsy was released, as is the standard practice for non Long Term Support (LTS) releases. The current LTS version is 8.04 “Hardy Heron”, which will be supported for three years (for desktop systems, five years for servers) with security updates and other packages.

For more info on the end of life announcement for Ubuntu 7.10 you can ready the official notice on the ubuntu-announce maillist archive.

For the record, the version is 9.04, not 9.0; it’s based on the year it’s released (2009) and the month it’s released (April, which equals 04), which is always a two digit number. The version number does not shorten to zaro (“0″), just as the October releases nevershorten to simply “.1″. It may seem like a nitpicky thing to fuss about, but it’s the difference between being accurate and, well, not.

kemarin di kantor saia menyarankan big boz  agar sebaiknya meninggalkan micro$ft opis.. kemudian beliau pun menyanggupi dengan catatan

oke boleh aja pindah ke open office, tapi banyak dokum udah terlanjut dibuat dengan opis 2007 (*.docx), kalo open office bisa membukanya boleh saja..

berarti cuma ada satu jalan… buka docx di open office..!!!

dengan gaga berani saia membuka open office yang udah lengket di hardy heron..

yup open office 2.4,, belum support ke docx .. .:(

setelah googling sana sini.. nyari bahan buat tambalan.. akhirnya nemu juga untuk platform debian / ubuntu…

dengan senyum manis gue buka console..

kita unduh dulu OdfConverter

wget http://blog.mypapit.net/imej/odf_filter.tar.bz2

setelah di ekstrak… akan muncul 4 file yang keren2..

MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu, MOOXTypeDetection.xcu, OdfConverter and README.txt

masukkan kata2 mutiara dari mbah papit

sudo cp OdfConverter /usr/lib/openoffice/program/

sudo cp MOOXFilter_cpp.xcu usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Filter/

sudo cp MOOXTypeDetection.xcu /usr/lib/openoffice/share/registry/modules/org/openoffice/TypeDetection/Types/

yip yip.. sepertinya berjalan baik baik saja… setelah open offie kita restart…

adakadabra… si docx lahir dengan sehat…

1. Today I spoke at a local high school – Northern Secondary, and was psyched to learn that their student body is very committed to making our world better. They have some young high-school activists who are driven to raise the consciousness of their fellow students through an activist newsletter, school events having to do with humanitarian issues and fundraisers such as building a school in Sierra Leone, a genocide coarse, and an administration that is gutsy.

I told them to be careful about spoon-feeding students as we live in a city, a time, where many people have a sense of entitlement. They agreed and felt that their school has a special group of students who are truly interested in helping others.

Question: Isn’t it the truth that if we figured out how to do it, we could encourage most young people in high school and below, to be involved in significant societal change? What do we need within our educational system that ultimately teaches our students to be kind, caring, just human beings? It’s possible. How do we do it?

2. My son’s teacher, Martha, is retiring after 25 years of teaching at his school. She is a kind, compassionate woman who loves children and exhibits great wisdom and experience through her teaching. She is an interesting woman. I don’t agree with all of her beliefs about child rearing, but I am delighted that my son’s first experience in school was an excellent one. He started at 2, is now almost 3, and look at that, his first teacher was awesome. I hope and pray he continues to have such luck throughout his schooling. Good luck Martha. Thank you for helping to raise our (Miriam and my) son.

Question: Can I ask you something. I have some simply questions I ask people from time-to-time, one of which is: How many teachers did you have throughout your life that made a serious impact on you - i.e. made you think,wonder, feel better about yourself and encouraged you to want more with the attitude that you can achieve what you set out to do. Mostly, the answer is 0-3, usually being closer to 0. Crazy. Of course there are those who learn from everybody and everything, so they say ’lots’ but that is not the norm. 

So how come we don’t have better teachers? Is it possible the system sucks the life out of them – too many students, to much reporting and not enough down and dirty teaching? Is it possible that teachers start off very excited to teach a new generation of students, but loose their luster because they have to discipline most of the time? Is it that the wrong people are going into teaching for the wrong reasons - the hours are good, the summer kicks-ass, and the money is manageable. Your thoughts?   

LXDE, Lighweight X11 Desktop Environment, another fast and lightweight windows manager. I prefer use this than XFCE :p

Here is some steps to install it on Ubuntu:

1. Add the repo line for lxde

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

copy this following repo line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/lxde/ubuntu hardy main

*for another release of Ubuntu, just change the hardy to yours

2.  Update and Install LXDE

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude install lxde

3. Logout your current user and select the LXDE on session selector

Finish . .:p

my LXDE screenshot, on PvJ-OS :p

Whenever I upgrade to a version of Ubuntu, I always have this problem of sound not working, after searching through the Ubuntu Wiki and various forums I came up with a solution which seems to work for me..

Fire up the terminal and type the following
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

add the following line
options snd-hda-intel model=auto

save the file and reboot. This should get your Computer’s sound up and running

Oggi ho preso di punta il problema: ieri ho dovuto spegnere di prepotenza 4 o 5 volte durante il caricamento perchè era evidente che qualcosa non andava (ci metteva davvero troppo a partire) senza poter sapere qual’era il problema.

Oggi ho cercato un po’ e il preziosissimo blog di PolloSky mi è venuto in contro ancora una volta…

La soluzione è qui, ma visto che è in mezzo ad altro, la copio pari pari di seguito:

Durante l’avvio lo schermo era completamente nero e il tempo di loading decisamente lungo…leggendo in giro per la rete mi sono reso conto che si tratta di un bug che ha infastidito diversi utenti. Comunque sono riuscito a trovare una soluzione da questo link: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usplash/+bug/, in pratica vi basta seguire un paio di passi.
Prima di tutto dovete eseguire il seguente comando

sudo gedit /etc/usplash.conf

e controllare i parametri di risoluzione, io ho impostato xres=1280, yres=800 per il mio 15.4; successivamente dovete eseguire il comando

sudo update-initramfs -u

a questo punto non vi resta che riavviare e verificare se il problema è stato risolto (io ho fatto la prova sia con risoluzione 1024×768 che con 1280×800 ed ha funzionato…spero sia così anche per voi).

AGGIORNAMENTO
Metto in evidenza il commento di Stem, che riporta una utile segnalazione:
“L’ho provata su più computers e anche sullo stesso e a volte funziona e allora tutto ok ma se non funge non si avvia più il sistema (kernel panic)!!
Il problema dell’avvio si risolve ripristinando la vecchia initrd.img dal live cd o da winzozz (come io ho fatto) andando in /boot cancellando l’initrd.img attuale e togliendo il .bak a quella precedente.”

Spero possa essere utile a qualcun altro! Per me ha funzionato…

One of the best things in Smalltalk or Squeak is the fact that there are almost no artificial barriers and you are free to explore. In a local environment, like on your laptop, there is not much to worry about. But if you use Squeak as a server and expose it to the world, like when you run a Seaside server, then you would like to have at least one high barrier that protects yourself from misuse.

What follows is my experience in setting up a restricted environment (chroot) on a linux box to run a Squeak server.The basic idea is that one sets up a directory with subdirectories and to enforce an environment, where only this directory tree is accessible and nothing else. This has the advantage that even if something goes wrong, it should be almost impossible to break out of this jail. So for example even if someone manages to open a filebrowser in Squeak via Seaside, all he could see would be this directory tree and nothing else.

The hard part is to setup such an environment, because everything you need during runtime has to be in that directory tree. I found that the article “chroot login HOWTO” by White and Rhodes describes very good how to setup a chroot login. This is a user, that after login has only access to a restriced directory tree. Following this HOWTO I found, that the only real problem was to build a working su program. On my minimal Ubuntu system I had to build a new su from sources and to run the installed su through strace to find every needed library.

Now we assume that you managed to setup an account sesidemo and that you can log into it. But you can’t do very much.  The restricted directory could be looking like this:

$ ls /home/seasidemo
bin  dev  etc  home  lib  tmp  usr

You need another trusted user account to install the squeak runtime into this restricted directory tree.

On my linux box the Squeak virtual machine is called squeakvm. Create a usr/bin directory and copy the VM to that place.

$ which squeakvm
/usr/bin/squeakvm
$ cp /usr/bin/squeakvm /home/seasidemo/usr/bin

You also need the shared libraries that squeak uses. As described in the HOWTO you can use ldd to find out, which libraries this are.

$ ldd usr/bin/squeakvm
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
        libutil.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libutil.so.1 (0xb7f70000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7f6c000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb7f46000)
        libnsl.so.1 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libnsl.so.1 (0xb7f2e000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7de4000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f7b000)

Now you have to locate these libraries (but linux-gate.so.1) in /lib and copy them over to the restricted lib.

$ cp /lib/libutil.so.1 /home/seasidemo/lib
$ cp /lib/libdl.so.2 /home/seasidemo/lib
$ cp /lib/libm.so.6 /home/seasidemo/lib
$ cp /lib/libnsl.so.1 /home/seasidemo/lib
$ cp /lib/libc.so.6 /home/seasidemo/lib
$ cp /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /home/seasidemo/lib

Part of the Squeak VM is made out of VM Plugins. You need to copy them too.

$ squeakvm -version
3.9-12 #1 Sa 5. Jan 00:24:24 CET 2008 gcc-Version 20070929
Squeak3.9alpha of 4 July 2005 [latest update: #7021]
Linux avion.lazarevic.de 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux
default plugin location: /usr/lib/squeak/3.9-12/*.so
$ mkdir -p /home/seasidemo/usr/lib/squeak
$ cp -r /usr/lib/squeak/3.9-12 /home/seasidemo/usr/lib/squeak

These VM Plugins also use shared libraries. As you have guessed: You need them too. I decided to copy every needed shared library for every VM Plugin to fullfill the dependencies, even if the Plugins are not very useful on a server (eg. audio plugins).

I used a small script to find all the libraries needed on my system:

$ for i in /home/seasidemo/usr/lib/squeak/3.9-12/*.so; do ldd $i; done | sed "s/^\t*\([^ \t]*\).*/\1/" | sort -u
/lib/ld-linux.so.2
libGL.so.1
libICE.so.6
libSM.so.6
libX11.so.6
libXau.so.6
libXdamage.so.1
libXdmcp.so.6
libXext.so.6
libXfixes.so.3
libXpm.so.4
libXrender.so.1
libXt.so.6
libXxf86vm.so.1
libasound.so.2
libaudio.so.2
libc.so.6
libdbus-1.so.3
libdl.so.2
libdrm.so.2
libm.so.6
libnsl.so.1
libpthread.so.0
libutil.so.1
libuuid.so.1

Find all those libraries in /lib and /usr/lib and copy them to /home/seasidemo/lib.

At this point you could copy over a prepared headless image to eg. /home/seasidemo/home/server, login into the restricted account and start the squeak with that image.

$ mkdir /home/seasidemo/home/server
$ cp headless.image /home/seasidemo/home/server
$ cp headless.changes /home/seasidemo/home/server
$ cp SqueakV39.sources /home/seasidemo/home/server

Note that by doing that, the image and changes file belongs to the trusted user. Assuming default umask settings and that you don’t change filepermissions, squeak can’t save any changes to that files while running as the user seasidemo. That is a good thing, because it prevents that changes to the squeak system are beeing saved. This could be a problem, if you use the squeak image as an instrument for data persistence.

$ su - seasidemo
Password:
-bash-3.2$ cd server/
-bash-3.2$ /usr/bin/squeakvm -headless headless.image

Now this has the disadvantage, that the server stops if you log out. You might want to find nohup on your system and install that too, so that the server keeps running.

-bash-3.2$ nohup /usr/bin/squeakvm -headless headless.image &

If you need more control over your server you could additionally install Xtightvnc into your restricted environment and use a vnc client to get access to the Squeak desktop of that server.

What I described above just describes how to make squeak run in a more secure environment. It does not prevent the Squeak server from being modified and misused. There are additional measures inside Squeak that make even this more difficult, but this also depends on the kind of server you planning to run.

At http://seasidemo.blobworks.com:9090 you will find a Seaside demo server, that was setup this way.

A veces es necesario compilar un kernel en Ubuntu, ya sea para agregar nuevas funcionalidades a nuestro Ubuntu o por alguna necesidad específica. Estos son los pasos:

1. Descargar las herramientas necesarias

sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-devel linux-source build-essential pkg-config ncurses-dev qt3-apps-dev qt3-assistant qt3-designer qt3-dev-tools qt3-doc qt3-qtconfig

2. Descargar el kernel de aquí. En la página principal nos muestra la última versión estable del kernel. Debemos descargar donde esta la letra F. Para este ejemplo usaremos el kernel 2.6.27

3. Una vez descargado, descomprimimos el archivo en la carpeta /usr/src

sudo cp /Escritorio/linux-2.6.27.tar.bz2 /usr/src

cd /usr/src

sudo tar xjf linux-2.6.27.tar.bz2

4. Ahora configuramos el kernel:

cd linux-2.6.27

sudo make xconfig

5. Aquí nos aparecerá un configurador gráfico del kernel, donde podemos agregar o quitar modulos que necesitemos. Si queremos basarnos en la configuración anterior damos click en load y seleccionamos el archivo de configuracion de nuestro kernel actual (o el que queramos) llamado config-nombrekernel

Luego cargamos los modulos que queramos que tenga nuestro nuevo kernel, por ejemplo el de soporte para Toshiba (o el que quieras, obviamente!)

Una vez hecho esto guardamos el archivo como “.config”.

6. Ejecutamos estos comandos en consola:

sudo su

make

make modules

make modules_install

Ahora puedes ir a ver esa película que tanto te gusta, o si lo prefieres ir a jugar Final fantasy o The legend of Zelda porque esto toma bastante tiempo (yo me demoré mas o menos 3 horas en este paso). Esto es totalmente desatendido, a menos que algo haya salido mal.

7. Una vez terminado, copiamos nuestro nuevo kernel a /boot

sudo cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-nombrekernel

8. (Corregido gracias a Walter Riedemann) Debemos crear el correspondiente fichero initrd

sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/nombrekernel
sudo mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-nombrekernel nombrekernel

9. Modificamos nuestro Grub y agregamos el nuevo kernel

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Aqui debemos encontrar algo parecido a esto

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel nombrekernel
root (hd0,?)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-nombrekernel root=UUID=???????-????-????-????-?????????????? ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-nombrekernel
quiet

Debemos copiar y pegar exactamente esto justo antes de la primera vez que veamos estas líneas en dicho archivo, y modificamos donde dice “nombrekernel” por el kernel que acabamos de compilar, para que quede agregado en la lista del grub. Los símbolos de ? son generados por cada instalación, por lo que son únicos y debes copiar los que te aparezcan en el grub. 

Hecho esto guardamos el archivo.

10. Reiniciamos y seleccionamos nuestro nuevo kernel, y listo!

Espero haber sido claro (lo dudo :S) y que a alguien le sea de utilidad.

UP THE IRONS!!

Ubuntu 7.04 was my first experience ever with a personal distribution running on a personal computer. My only experience was work related, using ssh connecting to a server, thus learning the basic cli-commands.

Summer of 2007 I ordered some computer hardware, and put together a custom computer. Naturally(!?), or more out of habit, I inserted the Winxxxs XP cd. It installed, ran pretty good for a few days, but with one intention only – to find my first GNU/Linux distribution – I found Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn!

« My first GNU/Linux experience was very good! »

The Feisty Fawn amazed me – it was fast, nice to look at, and came with a bundle of software. Finding and installing my favorite appz took seconds! Excellent. The only thing I can remember, which I still have some issues with, are the proprietary nvidia-driver.

Then came Gutsy! It was even better! Some improvements on central parts, mainly gnome and the menu. I was loving it! The GNU/Linux is just fantastic.

« The fact that Microxxxt and Axxle get away with their non-free OS’s, is beyond me! »

After getting comfortable with Ubuntu, joining the community posting on forums and such, I began experimenting with lightweight distros. Xubuntu was the winner. I also tried out a few window managers and other DE, which led me to the LXDE. I was sold! Gnome – go home!

But, I still loved the Ubuntu-way! So, when the Hardy Heron came out, I was the first one to install it. Now came my first bad experience with Ubuntu – it simply sucked! It was slow, boot-time increased, gnome was traveling in mud, the distro was bloated, and seemed immature. Canoncial did not delievere a product Ubuntu worthy!

Updates came, and 8.04.2 saw its dawn. Rumours says this fixed a few things, but I was long gone. Ubuntu is built upon Debian – they take Debian snapshots from their development branch(ref). So, why not try Debian, I thought. I installed a basic core using Debian Lenny, adding the repo’s to LXDE, and everything has been working perfectly! The LXDE is under development, and a few components contain a few bugs, but the gain of having a lightweight desktop, customized to my needs, out-weight all of the issues I was and still am experimenting.

« Debian Lenny with LXDE is simple, easy on the eye – and a perfect solution to first time Linux’ers! »

In fact, I have introduced and installed this system, on and old Tecra for my father, and on an old Dell Inspiron 8600 for my cousin.

Yesterday, not a day early given their release cycle, the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex came out. I was tempted again. So, I had to install. First I tried the CLI only. Maybe, maybe not – it took about 10 minutes – a CLI environment was up! Excellent! A basic core for any lightweight or custom GNU/Linux distribution, which I am going to look more into!

Okei – so I managed to install a second linux distro along side with my Lenny install. Grub messed things up a litte – Lenny was no longer handling GRUB – my new install was! I need to fix this!

Now, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 standard using the alternate disc. I am impressed!

« It seems as if Ubuntu is on top of its game again! »

I am going to use it for a few days, but I believe I can strongly recommend the latest Ubuntu build as a first time distribution to anyone again! When I installed, a notification about some updates came, and how to activate nVidia. The latter did not work. I will be looking into that. Also some broken language-packages-notification which needed repair. Adding the repo’s main universe multiverse may help fix this

Update: yes – adding the repositories worked flawlessly! Not only did nvidia driver got installed correctly – but my Acer AL1916W got recognized for the first time in Ubuntu’s history – with the correct screen resolution! The reason for me not configuring the repositories at install, was that the first attempt failed. It hanged at 45% for about 5 min, then at 86% for 15 min until I gave up, reinstalled with no mirror and thun no apt configuration.

Albeit, Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex looks good!

On my 2.0GHz Dual Core 2 Duo 2GB ram, I am looking at a 165 MB memory usage when firing up, which takes about 55 seconds – that’s what Conky says. As a comparison, Debian Lenny using LXDE, uses roughly 38 seconds, and 52 MB ram. That’s quite a difference!

I’m currently attending a 4 days training on IBM’ Websphere Application Server. They provide us with a Windows XP loaded laptop. Being a Linux zealot, I ask whether I can use my own laptop.

They also provide a wireless connection (which also connected to the internet) secured by CISCO’s LEAP protocol.

After a lil bit of tinkering, I was able to “extract” the credential used to connect to the wireless connection, and use it on my laptop. Gutsy’s Network Manager applet is able to recognize that it’s a LEAP wireless connection, and properly provided me the option to input the correct username and password.

Day 2

As usual, I boot up my laptop, and logged in. The Network Manager applet immediately tried to connect to the LEAP secured wireless network, but somehow seems to b stuck somewhere. When I hover the mouse over the network manager icon it says “waiting for network key for wireless network xyz..” but it did not show me the windows dialog for entering the LEAP credential.

My immediate suspicion went to the the Gnome Keyring manager. Opened the keyring manager, and check the entry related to the said wireless network. I found out that instead storing the LEAP credential that I provided earlier, the keyring saved the WEP keys that the LEAP protocol provides after authenticating. I decided to delete the keyring which was related to the said wireless connection. No go. Delete all of the keyrings. Nope.

I then created a new user account, and used it to connect to the wireless connection. It worked flawlessly. I was able to choose the right wireless connection, and choose LEAP as the authentication method. This, and the way the keyring behaves when storing credential for LEAP secured wireless connection led me to the conclusion that the reconnection failed due to the Network Manager Applet was unable to automatically determine whether the stored LEAP connection requires LEAP credential. It instead assumes that the wireless connection is secured using only WEP.

I currently haven’t found a solution that can fix the way network manager applet stores the correct information when handling a LEAP authenticated wireless network. The only thing that I can do is to delete any information stored by Network Manager applet, so that it will recognize that wireless connection as a new one, and provides me with the network key window dialog. To delete the stored information do the following on a terminal:
surfer@M5Mobile:~$ cd /home/surfer/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks/
surfer@M5Mobile:~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks$ ls -la
total 16
drwx—— 4 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:45 .
drwx—— 3 surfer surfer 4096 2008-06-22 21:05 ..
-rw——- 1 surfer surfer 0 2008-10-29 11:41 %gconf.xml
drwx—— 2 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:45 xyz
drwx—— 2 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:41 MWifo1

Notice that the information for the network xyz which was secured with LEAP was stored on it’s own folder. To delete the information, simply remove the folder.

surfer@M5Mobile:~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks$rm -rf xyz

Restart the laptop. After that you will be provided with the network key dialoga to choose LEAP as the authentication method, and enter the correct username and password. For convenience, you can delete the information before logging out of your laptop.

Project Proposal

We were inspired to our project, Gutsy Grub, on locating restaurants around the United States that serve weird food. Our target audience is people that like to try new and strange food. The problem that these people have is that they do not know where to get such food in their area. We created our map mash so that these adventurous people can easily find restaurants in their area that serve a variety of weird food. Within Gutsy Grub, these people have an opportunity to socialize and share their love of weird food with each other.

Outline

The following are the websites that we are using as data sources to create our map mash.

http://weird-food.com
http://www.yelp.com
http://maps.google.com
http://images.google.com

The user can select weird food from a list provided. Restaurants that serve the selected food will pop up on the map. From there, the user can browse these specific restaurants that serve this food. If the user clicks on a specific restaurant, they can get the basic information about it as well as a name and picture of the specific food that they want to eat there. Such information about the restaurant that is provided includes rating, type of food it specializes in, location, and phone number. In addition, we also combined a social network where the user can create a Gutsy Grub account and show off all of the weird foods that they have eaten. Within the Grub network, members can challenge one another to eat weird food. If they accept the challenge they can locate a restaurant in their area by using the main component of our map mash. To prove that they completed the challenge, they have to submit a photo of themselves eating the challenged food.

2-D Mockup Rough Sketches

2-D Mockup Digital

Editing the Print Outs

Our final version of Gutsy Grub has all of the components as mentioned above plus two of new components. First, on our homepage and member log in page, we created a section dedicated to the “Top Grubber”. The “Top Grubber” is the member who has eaten the most weird food and recorded it on their profile. In this section, we have placed a picture of the “Top Grubber” eating a weird food. Off to the side, we have provided some information about this person. This information includes their name, number of weird foods eaten, and the weird food that they are eating in the picture. Second, we created a “Weird Food of the Day” section, which shows up on every page. In theory this section would feature a new strange food everyday. In this section, we provide the name, where it is from, short description of what it is and a plated picture of the food.

With a sold out United Center and a hungry team looking for it’s first win of the young season the Predators responded with a gutsy performance and a shootout win over the Chicago Blackhawks last night.

The early schedule is brutal to the Preds. Having to play three different teams for their home openers is tough. Teams are up and pumped for those nights and typically they respond with an intense effort. In Chicago last night it was no different. the Hawks came out flying and jumped out to and early. Even though there were times that the Preds seemed to be chasing their tails they never really lost composure last night and kept plugging along.

Things I loved:

Physical Play – The Preds were hitting hard. Saw many hits from Hamhuis last night that looked really good. I love when he plays his game and keeps it physical. Saw Toots line up a few guys…I love how his game has matured. I can remember his first year where he would see someone across the ice and take off charging after them…sometimes he would hit him and other times he would crash the boards. It was pretty comical. Toots plays a much more controlled game.

Defensive Play – overall the boys looked good in our end. Minus a couple breakdowns they kept Chicago’s big guns in check. Don’t know about you but every time Havlat, Sharp or Toews touched the puck I just held my breath…they are so fast and so talented but our guys kept position and shut them down pretty good.

Suter and Weber – Wow. These guys look pretty special on the PP together. They are developing quite a chemistry and could quickly develop into one of the top defesive PP pairings in the league.

What I didn’t Like:

Arnott Leaving – Didn’t like seeing Arnott leaving with an injury. It doesn’t sound too serious but you never know. If there is one thing teams are famous for it’s not telling the truth with injuries…let’s hope it’s nothing serious and we have Jason back for the next game.

Other than that there was really not much from last night that I didn’t like. A few defensive breakdowns…some ill timed penalties…nothing huge last night. This is not me being a rose colored glass guy either…what I saw last night was a solid team effort. Our boys matched their enthusiasm and got a well earned two points. While you hate to give a point to a team that you will be competing with for a playoff spot I don’t think of it that way…I think of it as taking a point from them.

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