You are such a geek... » Techie Stuff

Private Browser Cleaner

Nick — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 11:09:18 +0000

There is so much hoopla about Private Mode browsing not actually keeping you private. Most of it is due to your addons for Flash and Java. Here are the extensions I use to keep the browser private ALWAYS:

Chrome – Click&Clean

Firefox – Click&Clean

Internet Explorer – CCleaner plugin since IE is the suckage

Intel GMA500 Support Matrix

Nick — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:39:43 +0000

First a few things:

Intel you suck…suck hard…your own Moblin distro can’t suspend because you feel that “embedded platforms shutdown and restart” Guess what sparky, they don’t always. Fix your damn IEGD driver
Dell and Ubuntu screw you both for creating some custom driver to send out on Dell 12 laptops. The driver I install now was extracted from your blob. Hate Theo from OpenBSD as much as you want, but no blobs
Windows drivers for this card suck pretty bad too. There is a video demo of the GMA500 Poulsbo playing Quake 3 off a MID. The driver in Windows XP-7 cannot play flash without massive frame drops. Totally unacceptable with the 10.1 Flash Beta to still have such trouble

The distro I landed with was Ubuntu 9.10. It pains me because it will never recieve the GNOME 2.30 install, but with PPA I am good with most everything else. I will use this as my hold over until Intel gets off their butts and produces quality code. I used to tell people that the Intel series of cards were the best in UNIX world for out of the box drivers. Yes+but=NO Don’t sour your good name Intel

Link to Support Matrix Spreadsheet if you browser does not support iframe

Links:

Conky Setup

Nick — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:18:33 +0000

I love me some eye candy that is actually useful. Conky falls into this category for me. In the olden days it was either gkrellm or a WindowMaker plugin. I have spent some time getting the conky setup EXACTLY how I want it. The results are posted below:

Install:
sudo aptitude install conky lm-sensors hddtemp python-feedparser

Extract this file to ~/.bin and make executable. Edit the files for weather.yahoo.com
Conky Scripts

Extract this file to ~/.fonts
Conky Fonts

Extract this file to ~/.conkyrc Be sure to edit the Gmail username for example
Conky RC

The History Channel of Today

Nick — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:06:29 +0000

There was a time in cable television when channel names insinuated content. Take for example the Military Channel, it is a safe bet there is going to be planes, guns, or other things blowing up from the military viewpoint.

I can safely turn there after a long day and see my stress melt away with the tonnage of bombs dropped from B-52s. The History Channel used to be an escape for my other secret hobby, history. It has come to my attention after being sick this week that no longer can I depend on the name of History Channel to mean that I will learn some history. Rather new programming that appeals to the masses of fringe culture (an oxymoron in itself) is plastered from day to day. Alan Jones (or Airman Jones as I knew him long ago) put together a list that truly reflects the programming schedule:

Bigfoot - Sasquatch or Man with Hirsutism
UFO’s – Discovering classified Air Force planes for 50 years
Jesus and the Da Vinci Code – We all know it has been disproved for years, but we are going to show it anyways
Area 51 and the Mystery of Champ - How a large, water-dwelling, reptilian creature was spotted flying over the desert in Nevada and strangely looks a lot like a weather balloon in one fuzzy Polaroid.

Jones added that the worse part of these shows is that they aren’t spread out of the programming schedule.

Now playing at 3, 6, 9, 1030, and a marathon on Sunday

No truer words Jones, no truer words :)

Fix for Skype

Nick — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:02:55 +0000

For all those running the Skype 2.0 Beta on Ubuntu Gutsy.

Seems that having Nessus installed will screw up your Qt libraries:

505 cd /opt/nessus/lib/
506 sudo mv libQtCore.so.4 libQtCore.so.old
507 sudo mv libQtGui.so.4 libQtGui.so.old
508 sudo mv libQtXml.so.4 libQtXml.so.old

VMware Server Beta 2 Review

Nick — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:44:03 +0000

The Good:

Bringing it up to level of workstation/fusion virtual machine compatibility? Vix if you are into the innards of virtualization.

The Bad:

Wow I mean where do you start? Let me walk you through my install process. I upgraded from the original vmware server to beta on an Ubuntu Gutsy box. The install process was smooth as butter and worked like a champ. I expect the smoothness because VMware is the benchmark for easy installs on Linux (only behind Google for using the Loki Installer) and has always shown that. What I never expected was the actual usage of the software. Gone is your GUI console. Hold on to that for a minute. It is gone, totally non-existstent. The GUI was replaced by a Web interface using AJAX. It all feels very Web 2.0 which is great for when I log into Digg or Facebook (Ooohh Shinny!) but this is enterprise software. What makes the web interface unbearable is the speed. Has anyone used Yahoo! Mail beta AJAX interface? It has brought this quad-processor 4GiB RAM machine to its knees. That is how the VMware Web console feels. VMware! WAKE UP! Web interfaces are great and when you make it optional like you always have with WebUI packages. Optional, it only adds to the flexibility your company has given admins and architects everywhere. I understand the reasoning, web runs everywhere and gives you a lot of options for using thin clients and PDA’s.

My other issue being that I installed the software on Ubuntu, the number one rated distro on Distrowatch. Millions of people use this distro and can even go to Wal-Mart and buy a machine with it. So why then would VMware not ship a default install that supported Ubuntu? The sudo nature of Ubuntu locks you out of the web interface. You must go in and sudo passwd root to get the web interface running. Why VMware didn’t create a group is beyond me.

This is wonderful, give me my console back now. You are no forcing me into a command line world and that spells bad news for you. If I want to roll around in the command line all day I will use Xen.

OpenSuSE 10.3 < Ubuntu Gutsy

Nick — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:47:25 +0000

I am done dealing with OpenSuSE 10.3. Before anyone starts I realize that it is a beta release candidate “blah blah blah.” I expect simple things to work without a hassle such as touchpads and wifi. Now laptops have always been the bane of Linux, but as of recently Ubuntu ran better than XP on this Sony TXN17p I have. In fact out of the box the hotkeys for sound Linus called Solaris a “buggy piece and backlight worked with no configuration. On OpenSuSE it shipped with none of that. While I expected this on 10.1 and MAYBE 10.2, to do this in 2007 is insane. Most people in this world now own laptops, not desktops. ACPI and Eject buttons should work out of the box. Not to mention this is a sony laptop and not jims computer shop or something. Sonypi and sony-laptop has been a staple of the Linux module kernels for at least 3 revs. SuSE I love(d) you! You were my first true Linux distro. I remember the 4.8 days of 12 CD’s and a manual that if thrown could break walls. Now you are a Novell puppet and not living up to the standards of your peers. Goodbye my love, I am off to the Cape of Good Hope!

Sony TXN-17P Linux Review

Nick — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 06:18:34 +0000

There is hope for us all…

Nick — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:19:41 +0000

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, while in college. This is what he did on top of designing a great Operating System. There is hope for us all. I find it funny that if he had a myspace account back then it would have the standard drinking picture :)

Linus Torvalds" />

Patchstick AppleTV Hack

Nick — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:19:33 +0000

I was really excited to have SSH on the AppleTV…why? No Clue. I am a geek. I use my Logitech remote for my roomba. This is simply something I do. Here is the steps to get the Patchstick working with 1.1 Firmware.

1. Find the patchstick torrent of the original version or create your own. I will not tell you where to find the torrent.

2. Download the AppleTV 1.1 DMG: Click Here!

3. cp /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi /Volumes/Patchstick

4. Place the USB Drive into the AppleTV USB port and yank the power button

5. Press and Hold Volume Down + Menu

6. Kernel boot message will appear and at the bottom you will see SSH and Perian installed

7. Yank the power cable and enjoy