Technology and Me

An extra step

2010-03-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

To get the Pixma 620b to work on the network for Ubuntu computers running Koala (9.10) one has to take an extra step to get it to work. Since the needed files from libcupsys2 are not in the new repositories. Leon Atkinson outlines how to do this.

Wacom now so easy

2010-03-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

So I was a bit leery to try to go through and install my Wacom tablet again on the new install of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) because of installing it on previous versions. Not that it was too entirely difficult, just a bit tedious to go through all of the commands and then get it configured properly. I decided though I was going to tackle the task. In Karmic, my Wacom Bamboo tablet is plug and play! This O/S is moving in leaps and bounds, this is by far the best version yet!

Networked Canon Pixma 620b

2010-02-27T09:09:00.001-08:00

Well I managed to get our new printer working on the network. I had been considering buying a printer server, but for about the same price we could purchase a brand new printer, our old one was a little on the blink, so this seemed a good option. Not sure how much we'll end up spending on inks, but the Pixma 620 has them all separate, which is good if we run out of a color, but we mostly tear through the black ink. (Just an FYI the "b" on the end of the model # only indicates the color...blue).

I've had it working from my laptop using the guide from Luca Gibelli here.
I will have to use it to setup scanning to and see if that works, but we haven't needed to scan anything yet. I had tried using another guide, but something didn't pan out right, so this was the best one for me, and it got it working right away. I'm going to use it again to setup printing from the desktop I built, and from my wife's laptop (probably after I get hers upgraded since the boot time isn't very good.)

BloGTK 2.0

2010-01-04T13:53:00.001-08:00

So I just added the new BloGTK 2.0 to my linux laptop. Setup was pretty simple, it crashed the first couple times, but that was probably because the addresses I was trying to have it verify were not in fact the real addresses for any of my blogs. So this is the first post from the BloGTK Editor. Unfortunately at this point it does not look like I am able to add Tags, because the box is grayed out. I will have to tinker with it more to really find out what my opinion of it is finally.

Feed Me

2009-07-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

So this is basically a test. I'm linking my blog (maybe blogs if I get ambitious) to my Twitter profile. I used Twitterfeed, as doing so was a suggestion by BrentOzar. I suggest checking out his site because he seems pretty savvy when it comes to the world of Twitter, and I wanted to know what some of the abbreviations were, so I now know RT means ReTweet.

Anyways following one suggestion of linking blogs to Twitter, I thought hey, I kind of wanted to do that anyways, and I can chain in Facebook somewhere in there too eventually. (Which is what I'm looking up how to do right now.)

Apparently it is as simple as searching facebook for Twitter and adding the application. It also appears to go both ways, so one can update Facebook status' via Twitter and vice-versa. So if anyone besides me is reading this because they saw something on Twitter or Facebook, I got it to work, thanks for reading.

Gnome-Do

2009-07-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I had resisted installing Gnome-Do on my desktop computer because frankly I just didn't see the purpose. I could just as easily use the mouse in the GUI to get whatever I wanted. I had a search bar on my desktop so I could search for files if I really needed to.

Its usefulness is much more apparent when using a laptop. Thumbpads are nice and they get the job done, but they can be a bit tedious on a widescreen laptop having to reset my thumb several times just to scroll across the screen.

Gnome-do takes manipulating the GUI and minimizes it to a few keystrokes. I have a decent rate of typing so it is pretty useful for me. Instead of navigating the mouse through a few menus started in the corner of a screen, I can just hit Super + Space, and then type the name of the program that I want. My only complaint would be that it doesn't exactly play the best with LXDE, and by that mostly its interaction with the file manager. It won't just open a folder. It is Gnome-Do and not LXDE-Do so some quirks are to be expected I suppose. Regardless, I like it and I use it, and I would recommend it to anyone who is using linux on a laptop.

Enabling Ctrl + Alt+ Backspace

2009-07-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

I knew upgrading to jaunty would of course bring up the issue regarding the disabling of the ctrl+alt+backspace issue. Apparently there are some people who manage to accidentally hit this combination? I don't really know how they do that, but I guess there are quite a few because Canonical disabled it. However, for those like myself that like to have a quick out for those times when tinkering does undesirable things, the fix is a simple one, Ubuntu Geek has a how to. Not being one for the most direct or clean way of doing it, I of course opted for the simplest way, which is apparently installing a small python script to make the change.

New Ubuntu, New Dosbox, New Issues

2009-07-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

So apparently the new Ubuntu changed something about how the keys are read and in the new dosbox that resulted in the arrow keys not working. The solution is simple enough, I just edited the config file and in the section marked [sdl] (near the top) and changed "usecancodes=true" to "usecancodes=false".

I had hoped that this new fix would miraculously let me zoom in Syndicate Wars now. I was unfortunately wrong. However, it made me dig a little deeper, and I found that the zoom level is apparently tied to the weapon the agents are using. At least someone said that on the abandonia forums. I'll have to test it out myself here soon.

LXDE and sound

2009-07-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

So I wanted to be able to adjust the sound while using LXDE. The sound applet is not loaded by default. I was able to use the terminal and then just type "alsamixer" to open up alsa mixer and unmute the sound. However, an easy way to add the sound applet was shown here.

Pidgin Holed

2009-07-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

I finally decided to look for a solution to the problem of Pidgin not being able to connect to Yahoo! Messenger. The solution was here, http://www.pidgin.im/download/ubuntu/

LXDE

2009-07-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

I wanted the LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) on my laptop. I used the system monitor (System > Administration > System Tools > System Monitor) in GNOME, XFCE, and LXDE to see which had the smallest footprint in RAM. I salvaged a 512MB DDR ram from a similar laptop to bring the total RAM up to 768, which means this laptop only had 512MB of RAM before. Not running anything on start up, just a boot into the "vanilla" (nothing tweaked) operating system, LXDE used about 190 MB, XFCE used about 225 MB, and GNOME used about 280 MB. Considering that Firefox itself uses up about 90 MB of RAM without a bunch of flash going on I wanted to keep the RAM usage down a bit. So I went with LXDE. I honestly was surprised that it beat XFCE, which is touted as the lightweight distribution. To install on Jaunty was as simple as going into Synaptic and searching for LXDE. The tricky part was getting wireless to work because of the broadcom proprietary drivers. I got them working in gnome (see previous post), but for the drivers to be used in LXDE I needed to tell it to start the network manager on start up. To do so I just opened up a terminal and then entered the following command at the prompt:

sudo leafpad /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

Then after entering my password at the sudo prompt I added the following line to my autostart file:

@nm-applet

So now the network-manager applet starts with the desktop environment, and wireless works in LXDE for me.

Broadcom woes

2009-07-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

So I hosed my wireless connection in Hardy Heron on my HP Pavilion zv6000 when I installed the LXDE desktop environment. It was completely my fault, in my click happiness, I decided it would be cool to have the LXNM, or LX network manager, installed as well, you know to try it ALL out. So I didn't pay any attention to the fact that it conflicted with network-manager, ie what was keeping me connected to the internet. So long story short I tried several ways (Windows, Wired connection, etc.) to get it working again, I just opted to install Jaunty Jackalope, Ubuntu 9.04, which I was going to do anyways.

The installation went off without a hitch, well except for the one I knew was coming, Broadcom wireless. I did the installation with a wired connection by the way. It took some tinkering but I managed to get wireless working by following the posts on the ubuntu forums here, and more specifically post #7 here.

The tricky part is that the "obvious" way of doing it, System > System Tools > Hardware drivers, and then activating the proprietary B43 Broadcom wireless driver did not work. It would not allow me to click and activate it, so the button that is supposed to turn green, sadly, remained greyed out. What I had to do was go into synaptic and load up fw-cutter myself, which after doing that made the button green in the Hardware drivers window. Then I ran the code in the terminal provided in the above posts, it should be noted that the code runs a script which downloads files, so a wired connection is needed still. After that I could see the wireless networks and had a connection...until I rebooted. So, rinse and repeat, and now it seems to be working fine.

Old School Gaming

2009-06-22T20:09:00.000-07:00

So since I am home I decided to break out some of my old video games and see if I could get them running on a Linux machine. I used the laptop I inherited from my wife, an HP Pavilion zv6000.

The game I wanted to play the most was Syndicate Wars, I remembered playing it for hours! I have the original disc so after getting DOSBOX from the Ubuntu repositories (via Add/Remove under Applications), I popped in the disc and went to work. I followed the instructions at the Syndicate series unofficial fan site. I used the configuration file from there as well. Most of the commands translate fairly easily, one just has to remember that Linux uses "/" where DOSBOX emulating MS-DOS uses the "\".

Where I did run into problems was in mounting the CD-ROM that contained Syndicate Wars. The CD label is "SYN WARS QA 9.0", DOS was not a fan of spaces and long names, and DOSBOX follows it in this regard. So after hours of finagling and trying many different commands and options, like the -label, to no avail, I just copied the CD to my hard drive. I just right clicked on the mounted disc icon on my desktop, then clicked on copy disc, saved it as a file image. Then instead of "mount d /media/discname" I was able to use the imgmount command instead, "imgmount d /home/computername/dosprog/discname.iso -t iso" and BINGO! I was able to install and play a bit of Syndicate Wars. The only thing that doesn't work for me is Zooming in and out, and I don't know if that is because of the laptop's keyboard layout or something else. It is a bit of an annoyance, and I tried to change the keys for zooming, but that did not work either.

I have the Ultima games, Syndicate games, Theme Hospital, and X-COM UFO defense all loaded on and ready to play. They all seem to work splendidly in DOSBOX. Sometimes I have to adjust the speed by hitting CTRL + F11, and let the mouse get released by CTRL + F10, but other than that they run fine.

Desktop Blogger

2009-03-01T15:22:00.000-08:00

I thought it would be nice to have just an application on my desktop to post blogs from. Not that it is all that difficult to log in to Blogger (since I'm usually logged into Google anyways), but I just wanted something to open up via the desktop rather than the browser. In my little world I imagine I might blog more regularly if I had an application for it rather than surfing to a webpage to do it.

I first thought that it might be possible to use Prism to make some sort of desktop application from Blogger, but that didn't work out.

So I checked out the Ubuntu repositories for some blogging tools, and found a few. Unfortunately none of them work as well as I would like. The one that looks the most promising, BloGTK, is still in 1.1, and doesn't support the ATOM format that Blogger currently uses. The arrival of version 2.0 of BloGTK has been anticipated since mid 2008, so I don't know when it will arrive, but I'm looking forward to trying it out.

2008-11-30T12:46:00.000-08:00

This is a test, how Drivel works.

Tweaking

2008-11-29T20:06:00.001-08:00

I get annoyed with Pidgin's tool tips. They come up so quickly that it makes it difficult to just see who is on. I found that there are extended preferences, which allows the user to turn off tool tips entirely, or simply increase the time before a tool tip pops up. It is in the Ubuntu repositories, and can be downloaded via synaptic. The package is pidgin-extpref, or something near enough.

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Keeping Track

2008-11-25T21:59:00.000-08:00

So I decided to reinstall Hardy Heron. I had mucked things up with the experimental NVidia drivers, so I decided since I didn't make my /home directory my /home directory the last time, and ended up with two, I'd just reinstall.

So I added the medibuntu repository and added those things.

I'll be adding support for my Wacom Tablet by using this How-To

Then I'll be adding Screenlets again, using their How-To

Rebate!

2008-05-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

I received my rebate check from E-power a few days ago! No hassle, no fuss, and it was within the state 10-12 weeks. So I haven't any more to say on that.

Now what was I going to write....?

2008-05-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well I finally did it, I ordered more memory for my computer. It should arrive tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to see an actual performance improvement. I got my XP cd so I was able to put it in a virtual machine, and I loaded and updated the whole thing. It just runs sort of slowly with the 512mb of memory I alloted it, well streamed video is jumpy. So I'm hoping with the upgrade it will zoom. Then I'll see about making it seamless. I may also look into changing which version of VirtualBox I use, as apparently there are some limitations to the OSE version that I currently use.

I don't know if the extra memory will speed up Oblivion any or not either. I run it through Wine, but I have a suspicion that the bottleneck lies with the graphics card memory rather than the system memory.

Anyways I ordered the memory through Newegg, since it was on sale, and it had a rebate, so I'll be sending that in quickly and we'll see how well that works out.

Promoting Linux

2008-03-31T20:07:00.001-07:00

There is a site dedicated to getting 1,000,000 people to switch from Windows in all its forms (XP, Vista, whatever) and pick up GNU/Linux. It has a nice explanation of what that actually is and how someone can give it a try. They also have banners and logos which help promote the site.

I've converted my wife and one of our friends, so that's 2.

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Searching for results

2008-03-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

So I've gotten used to Google's search results, and how they are pretty clear cut and satisfactory for me. Usually what I want is one of the first results, and almost always on the first page. Granted I'm pretty good at my searching techniques so that probably helps, at least I think so. Recently I had been using Blingo, which was powered by Google, because there were slight odds of winning something. In fact I had won $150 from them once, and one of my friends won an iTunes gift certificate, therefore I did too. However, I haven't won anything for two years searching lately. So when they switched from Google the other day, to using Yahoo, MSN, and ASK, it wasn't too hard for me to give it up. Ask never gave me good results, I refuse to support Microsoft, and Yahoo's games don't work on Linux, and they are about to be consumed by Microsoft anyways.

Well I could just use Google (now that I've gotten through purging my Blingo connections) without using anything in between. Though I liked the idea of possibly getting something back for searching, which I did a lot of anyways. There is another option though, instead of me getting something back, I can give something back to someone else. My only qualm though is that it uses Yahoo search, so to be the results seem a little cluttered and not as good, but it may just be a chance for me to get off my "high horse" and take the opportunity to lend some support.

So I will be using Goodsearch and adding a penny to Lutheran World Relief for each search I do.

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Dabbling with Python

2008-03-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

So I bought a book on game programming in python from Amazon a while back. A few days ago I finally got through the first chapter (not that it was difficult, but that I just hadn't had time to sit down and look through it). Now I know that only one chapter into a book is really not enough to give an adequate review, but so far I have to say it is excellent. The author explains the concepts in an easy to understand manner, and the way things are setup in the book. It has me pretty excited about learning more about the Python language. The exact book is called "Game Programming: The L Line, The Express Line to Learning." the author is Andy Harris and it is published by Wiley.

Another fun discovery is Movable IDLE. IDLE stands for Integrated DeveLopment Environment. Usually that would be abbreviated as IDE, as it is for most Integradted Development Environments. IDLE is made for python and it allows one to enter a line of code and immediately execute it, it can also be used as a calculator if one is so inclined. The nice thing about Movable IDLE is that it can be put on a USB stick. It is something close to nagware or crippleware though, it doesn't come with full functionality (I don't think I'm experienced enough for that to be a problem), but it still allows the execution of code and saving of code. The nag screen pops up every time it is opened encouraging the user to try Movable Python, which is a more full implementation (more support for running in windows and importing modules), but actually costs something. Since I'm just getting into this, I don't see myself paying for the mobile version to be honest. So regardless I think it is good enough for me.
The site says:

Each distribution costs only £4.99, and you get free support, and free downloads of all updates to Movable Python for one year.

They also say that they donate have of the proceeds to OLPC and the Python Software Foundation.

(I'm less fond of the OLPC project now that Microsoft got their hands on it, since they will be putting a special version of XP (aren't they dropping support for this soon?) which would violate the 5th principal of the project.)

You can find both Movable IDLE and Movable Python HERE.

Virtualization pt.2

2008-03-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

So I actually got a chance to tinker a bit with Virtualbox now and I have to say that I really like it. I still have OpenSuse 10.3 in a machine and now I have Ubuntu 8.04 [Hardy Heron] Alpha 6 release loaded as well. As someone who likes to tinker and see what is new and different virtualization is a wonderful discovery (to the point where it is embarrassing that I have never tinkered with it before, oh ignorance!). It is quite beneficial to be able to mess around with an O/S or distro and still maintain a stable environment without having to update and configure everything. (This makes my wife very happy, although I doubt she knows this...) Hopefully I will have my XP CD soon so I can really get to what I had planned on tinkering with.

I'll probably be looking to upgrade my RAM, as I only have 1G right now. Not having to spend over $100 for XP since I already own it, I may put that money towards more memory. I would have more to give to the guest operating system.

Virtualization

2008-03-09T14:39:00.001-07:00

Well I wanted to try virtualization because I thought it would be a good way to get some of the features that I have to boot into Windows for. Right now that is pretty much only to use Firefox in Windows because ABC doesn't allow their player to work for Linux. (I gave them feedback on this but it is apparently something that doesn't even warrant a response). Of course that wouldn't be a problem if my wife and I could just catch Grey's Anatomy when it is on. We tend to not be around or thinking of it though on Friday nights at 7pm (central).

Besides that I would like to have a way to use Libronix in linux. Libronix is a digital library system for a lot of theological works. Yes, of course I've already looked for alternatives, and yes, I already have gnome-sword. After reading a review of four virtualization options here I opted to try out VirtualBox. I liked the fact that it had a smaller overall footprint (on hard drive and RAM) than the other options and was simple to use as well. As I am writing this I am in the middle of installing OpenSuse 10.3 to a virtual machine. Simply because at this point I don't have my XP installation CD handy. Once that happens I hope to get Libronix running, and then perhaps the software for my digital voice recorder (I had used it before to record classes). The other programs would probably just be Adobe Reader (I know I can read and even create PDF's in Linux, but there are some forms that just don't work) and Formatta Filler, which is often used to fill out special PDF's that the ELCA uses. Since I can already run Oblivion through WINE without many issues, there really isn't much incentive for me to ever boot directly into Windows again. I'm hoping to get it all to work and then I'll just make a partition for Ubuntu. (I may put on a different distro just for back-up lest my tinkering get me too far into trouble)

I've actually used Qemu a little bit, but really only with Damn Small Linux. I wanted to be able to play around with Linux at work, because I've found I really dislike working in Windows now. Other than that I haven't played with it too much, the interface seemed a bit more confusing. VirtualBox walks you through the process step by step and even offers suggestions as to the setup.

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Power On

2008-02-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

Well I got my new PSU a few days ago, plugged it in and it runs fine. There was an initial high-pitched squeal when I first turned the PSU on, but after firing up the computer it has not come back.

So today I dropped off the rebate. It says it should take 10-12 weeks to arrive. I took the letter to the post office so it should certainly get post-marked before March 1st. I made scans of the receipt (invoice) and the UPC still attached to the box. I discovered in scanning the invoice that while it appears black and white to the eye when scanned it comes up colorful, probably so they can tell if they are in fact getting the original receipt or a copy.

I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to rebates. Stories like this and one from this blogger show that I am not alone in this paranoia. Besides this my dad had issues with a Motorola phone rebate, after he contacted them to find out why he hadn't received the rebate they tried to tell him he did not send the UPC. He had in fact sent them the whole box because of all the plastic crap they used he couldn't get it off. So after some additional hassling and a few more weeks he got his rebate check.

This site has a copy of the article from the Mercury new in San Jose that is no longer available on there website. This one really makes me leery of rebates!

So I will be counting down and keeping track to see if Newegg.com and Epower will be more honest with their rebates, I would find it hard to believe that Newegg could or would allow such scams and not have a mile long list of complaints of people getting screwed over.

However if it is the case, I've called the Better Business Bureau before, when my roommate's Xbox wouldn't play Morrowind and Microsoft said it was the game's fault, which it was not. After researching the problem and calling Bethesda who confirmed it was a problem with the Optical Drive that Microsoft used, I knew Microsoft had been feeding me a line, they were compliant only after we filed a complaint with the BBB. I hope I don't have to go to these extremes again, but I'm prepared to do so, simply on principle. The rebate now is only $15, but its my $15!

I can't do it Cap'n, I just don't have the power!!!

2008-02-20T09:54:00.000-08:00

My PSU (power supply unit) finally kicked the bucket the other day. More accurately the fan in the PSU kicked the bucket. It would seize up occasionally causing the computer to crash, but I could just "jump start" it by sticking a pen or something in to rotate the fan and then it would run fine on its own. This time though, there was no recovering it. So I ordered a new one from NewEgg today, this neat one with lights in fact. I hope it arrives soon because not having the tower makes it difficult to print at the apartment, let alone it totally messes up my comic and programming aspirations. However, having to use the laptop with the grindy-growly fan, might just motivate me enough to send it in and get it replaced.

I already received the e-mail saying I've been charged for the PSU, so hopefully it will soon be followed by a shipping notice.

I was thinking about upgrading the RAM since I had the tower cracked open, but I'm not about to plunk $100 down to double the RAM from 1Gb to 2Gb, when there are no real performance hits to the system.

GIMP-y

2008-02-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

So I've been using The GIMP to create a comic (check it out here). The thing is though that The GIMP has been slightly annoying me in certain aspects. Especially the rectangle selection tool. Now I will admit, I am no GIMP guru. There just isn't really a simple way to create shapes with it, at least not that I'm aware of, so I've used the rectangle selection tool, which while successful in some aspects I also seem unable to unselect the stinking thing. So then if I try to do something outside of the previously selected area I can't do squat. It just irks me...ok vent over.

And again...

2008-02-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well reading Neko's post from before about getting my Wacom Tablet to work again, I found out it was because of a kernel (the kernel being the heart of the Operating System as it were) [wikipedia] update. Well of course after I went and fixed my tablet, someone found an exploit in the latest kernel, on February 10th, which was patched by no later than the 12th. I got the update notification automatically in Ubuntu, but didn't patch it right away (the exploit was a local one). So I checked before I installed the patch, Wacom was working, after I updated the system, no more Wacom. So it just means I have to go back to those steps and go through them again.

Another U.S. Ubuntu Distributor

2008-02-09T07:49:00.000-08:00

I honestly don't know how this company actually rates, but I just saw their link when I was getting to the Ubuntu Forums, and thought I'd check it out. It is called Eight Virtues, and they sell desktop towers with Ubuntu pre-installed, and they say it is customized so you shouldn't have to reconfigure anything, which to me sounds like they have it setup where the user won't have to figure out how to make the DVD player play commercial movies on DVD. Also they only sell the towers, they recommend the purchase of monitors, mice, and keyboards from other places.

I don't know about their support and warranties (although they have what look like decent options) so that is really a big question. Although for the most part it looks like one would only have to pay for shipping back to them.

So this company out of Georgia (USA), joins Dell and System76 in offering pre-installed Ubuntu systems. I'm really glad to see it catching on.

Easy Come, Easy Go, Easy Come Back Again

2008-02-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

So the other day I tried to use my Wacom Bamboo tablet, and to my dismay found that it was not working. So with some super sleuthing (read: going back to the original HOW TO), I was able to find out that one of the kernel updates had overwritten some things. The solution was provided by neko18 here. The fix was quite simply re-doing a couple of the original steps. So in a matter of minutes I was able to fix my problem.

It's getting scarier every day.

2008-02-07T13:15:00.000-08:00

I could just stop reading all these articles about government and business associations trying to exert more control over people, but I think that would only help their positions. Lately after reading some articles I tend to find myself thinking...don't we have a Constitution? Shouldn't our Government respect that? Apparently in these days of Homeland "Security", we are expected to give up our rights so they can "protect" us.

For instance people crossing the border now forfeit the right to have their data kept private. An article in the Washington Post exemplifies the situation.

While this hypothetical article, The Right to Read, is somewhat satirical, it is quite scary to see some of this stuff in action these days. We're talking 1984 kind of scary.

The "great brains" {sarcasm} of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) want to install "Copyright Filters" on your computer to filter for illegal content. They also want ISPs (internet service providers, for any who might not know) to filter for illegal content. These are the same people that sued a single mother for sharing songs somewhere to the tune of $10,000 dollars per song, or $220,000. You can of course buy the same songs for $0.99 on iTunes or Amazon.com.

More from the Business side (also from The Right to Read article) is this:

The proponents of this scheme have given it names such as “trusted computing” and “palladium”. We call it “treacherous computing”, because the effect is to make your computer obey companies instead of you. This was implemented in 2007 as part of Windows Vista; we expect Apple to do something similar. In this scheme, it is the manufacturer that keeps the secret code, but the FBI would have little trouble getting it.
What Microsoft keeps is not exactly a password in the traditional sense; no person ever types it on a terminal. Rather, it is a signature and encryption key that corresponds to a second key stored in your computer. This enables Microsoft, and potentially any web sites that cooperate with Microsoft, the ultimate control over what the user can do on his own computer.

Vista also gives Microsoft additional powers; for instance, Microsoft can forcibly install upgrades, and it can order all machines running Vista to refuse to run a certain device driver. The main purpose of Vista's many restrictions is to make DRM that users can't overcome.

And of course we can't expect any help from the government because they are basically clueless and are more willing than ever to rescind our rights in the name of Homeland Security. Apparently anonymity and computers = terrorism in their eyes.

I think I'm going to have to start hand writing daily letters to my representatives to inform them that I don't approve of this nation turning into a Surveillance-Police State.

Linux Wacom Tablet

2008-01-19T20:32:00.001-08:00

So for Christmas my wife got a me a Bamboo Wacom Tablet. I wanted it for photo-editing and digital drawing. (I want to make my own comic strip/book thing) So after we got back from our Christmas break I managed to get it working by following the tutorial here: Ubuntu Forums.

When I first got it running the extra buttons on the pad wouldn't work, but I think I had made a typo when I entered the commands to make them work. The next big thing for me was to get the pressure sensitivity and the eraser to work. A quick Blingo search took me to the Linux Wacom site where they mentioned setting the preferences within GIMP itself. A few mouse clicks later and now my Wacom Tablet knows that the other end of the pen is used for erasing, and pressure sensitivity works as well. I am really thankful for the smart people who made this, and those people who made it work for Linux.

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Python

2008-01-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my purpose post, I will be hopefully teaching myself (read: reading books about and asking for help from others on forums) the Python language. I believe that it is technically a scripting language. I'm opting to learn it over (or just before) Perl because it has a more rigorous syntax and promotes well written code with comments. I also want to use it because it is cross-platform so I should be able to write programs/scripts for most operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS). I would eventually like to write or improve a program for my gaming group. We'll see how well that goes. For now I'm starting by looking at tutorials...for non-programmers, because even though I've had a few years of using Microsoft's Visual Studio (Visual Basic Language), a semester of C++ in college, and some experience with HTML (which while not 'programming' is still learning to use a language so I count it), it has been a while since I have done any of them.

So I'll be looking here to start.

As well I'm thinking about picking up a python book or two from Amazon.

Purpose

2008-01-17T13:40:00.001-08:00

It's good to have a purpose when writing a blog, or really doing anything for that matter. So the purpose of this blog is really quite simple, it is to keep track of my trials and errors (probably have a lot of the latter) as I experiment with teaching myself about Linux, Python, and whatever technology related adventures I come up with. I envision this as being a repository of information for how I have been learning. So it will likely have snippets of code, How-To's (probably How-Not-To also), and links to sites that I have generally found useful.