(Sat, May 01, 2010)
Brrrrrb
(Sat, May 01, 2010)
I wanted to upgrade my hard drives so I installed this one from scratch -- something I haven't done for well over a year. It took around 8 hours to get everything set up correctly, mostly because I had some Oracle migration issues (note to self: use the export and import tools, not backup and restore). Mostly I'm happy with 10.04, and since it's an LTS I'll probably stick with it a while. Some bullets:
* The new default theme is awful, and whoever decided to move the window buttons to the left needs to have a shoe thrown at them. I immediately moved them back, switched the window border to Litoral and the controls to Industrial. Ah, better.
* Again there were sound issues, and I had to edit two more config files to get four speakers working (the center one is a lost cause at this point). They do a good enough job though and I'm content.
* Eclipse menu items were sans icons again. I encountered this in the last release, and fixed it by clicking on a setting in the Appearance Preferences dialog. Now the Gnome developers have removed that as well; they really don't want me to have icons next to my menu items. I finally learned how to get them back with this command: gconftool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons --type bool true.
* The IM client is more integrated with the desktop now, and it's almost interesting to run it again (I've been non-IM for years now). There are also social networking interfaces built in, but I'm not much of a social networker. (I find most people either boring or irritating, and the small percentage that remain soon find me either boring or irritating. And so it goes....)
* The boot-up time is now very fast. I almost want to power down more often just so I can marvel at the boot-up speed. (Of course I won't. There are too many environmentalists that I want to annoy by leaving things on all the time.)
* I will try to keep things simple for this OS, cruft-less, minimal. I will not install Amarok and its legions of KDE libraries, even though I love Amarok more than any other computer program ever. I will use -- eegh -- Rhythmbox. I will not install any alternative window system, no matter how much I hear about how cool the new KDE 4 has become, or how perfectly clean and simple Xfce is. I will be content. I will eat salad with little bits of chicken chopped up in it, and watch the Ricky Gervais Show, and laugh like I did at Yardale where I had a 4.0 grade point average.
* The new default theme is awful, and whoever decided to move the window buttons to the left needs to have a shoe thrown at them. I immediately moved them back, switched the window border to Litoral and the controls to Industrial. Ah, better.
* Again there were sound issues, and I had to edit two more config files to get four speakers working (the center one is a lost cause at this point). They do a good enough job though and I'm content.
* Eclipse menu items were sans icons again. I encountered this in the last release, and fixed it by clicking on a setting in the Appearance Preferences dialog. Now the Gnome developers have removed that as well; they really don't want me to have icons next to my menu items. I finally learned how to get them back with this command: gconftool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons --type bool true.
* The IM client is more integrated with the desktop now, and it's almost interesting to run it again (I've been non-IM for years now). There are also social networking interfaces built in, but I'm not much of a social networker. (I find most people either boring or irritating, and the small percentage that remain soon find me either boring or irritating. And so it goes....)
* The boot-up time is now very fast. I almost want to power down more often just so I can marvel at the boot-up speed. (Of course I won't. There are too many environmentalists that I want to annoy by leaving things on all the time.)
* I will try to keep things simple for this OS, cruft-less, minimal. I will not install Amarok and its legions of KDE libraries, even though I love Amarok more than any other computer program ever. I will use -- eegh -- Rhythmbox. I will not install any alternative window system, no matter how much I hear about how cool the new KDE 4 has become, or how perfectly clean and simple Xfce is. I will be content. I will eat salad with little bits of chicken chopped up in it, and watch the Ricky Gervais Show, and laugh like I did at Yardale where I had a 4.0 grade point average.
(Sat, May 15, 2010)
Flyers pulled off some beautiful fractal symmetry last night: down three games to zero in the series, they win three games and force game seven; then down three goals to none in game seven, they score three goals and tie the game; the fourth goal is the fourth game is the win -- outstanding!
(Thu, May 27, 2010)
Some of you, my adoring flock, will find me unpredictable when I say unto you, "I did not hate the Lost finale". I actually rather enjoyed it. I know, I know, the whole afterlife thing is hokey, and not unexpected, and the character reunions didn't always click firmly into place (especially Sayid and that blonde girl; I thought his big love was that Iraqi woman..?), but I was satisfied anyway. There remain a thousand plot holes and ten thousand question marks; the resolutions were mostly *magic* (a wizard did it!), but I didn't mind. This was *low* on the BSG scale of finale-suck. So who cares if the island is the geological equivalent of Marsellus Wallace's briefcase? So what if some of the characters got shafted (the last few episodes this season made me think of an amateur chess player who finds himself in a position too complex for him to understand very well so his strategy is to exchange pieces until things simplify enough for him to stabilize his game. Similarly the Lost writers went about killing off all the characters they couldn't fit into their endgame, reducing the plotlines into something more manageable. They sort of succeeded. I guess they did.)?
Of course, I might have been happier if the island turned out to be a giant alien spaceship, and all the 815 survivors were abductees undergoing experiments, a-and Jacob was an alien-human hybrid, and the smoke monster was fuel exhaust, and....
Of course, I might have been happier if the island turned out to be a giant alien spaceship, and all the 815 survivors were abductees undergoing experiments, a-and Jacob was an alien-human hybrid, and the smoke monster was fuel exhaust, and....