Another Opinion Among Many

Look out, Skye, this is a geeky post!  :lol:  I thought that I’d share a few nice things that have happened to me regarding my experience with Linux.

First, as many know, I have been using a Creative Muvo V100 as my MP3 player lately.  I still really like this player.  It does what its supposed to without any really amount of effort on my part.  This is a good thing.  Since my hard drive dies on the Windows machine, I’ve not installed the software that came with my MP3 player on it.  That’s because I have been using it with my Linux machine.

At first, it was just a drag and drop experience, but now its a bit more interactive. I’ve found a way to ensure that I can at least “see” my player in Rhythmbox, and am downloading Amarok and Exail as I write this.  So, I may have more good news as far as this player goes.

The secret is to put a small hidden file, known as a “dot” file under *nix, on the player itself.  The dot-fil0 is empty. as the name is the only important descriptor.  So, if you have a Creative Muvo V100 1GB MP3 player and its not recognized by your favorite music manager, try placing a file on the player itself called .is_audio_player and you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it is then recognized as a device when you plug it in!

Also, I have to advise that I have been successful in printing to my Epson CX1500 from my Linux machine to the printer hosted by a Windows XP machine.  To ensure that you have this type of success, ensure that you have enabled unix printing support on your XP box and configured your /etc/samba/smb.conf file to use “share” under “security” so that you can print to your printer without having to enter a silly password.

It looks like the Windows machine has died for good.  I was trying to swap over files from my Debian install to the Windows machine so that I could wipe my drive and replace Debian with Ubuntu.  About 1/2 way through the file transfer (over 100mbps ethernet, which is never any where near that, ever), the Windows machine unexpectedly rebooted.  It stopped at the spot where Windows would begin to load, complaining about an unrecoverable error and that I was to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL.  This did not help.

Under the Recovery Console, which I go to by insterting my Windows CD and booting from it, I did a CHKDSK and it also complained about an unrecoverable error.  A DIR request yeilded  no directory but a complaint about an unrecoverable error.

Without any other recourse, I am going to try and reinstall Windows.  So far, after it prechecked the “not quick” install, the installation has been stuck at 39% for the last 45 minutes.  So, its trying to do a bad block check and work around those, I guess.  Its not doing it very quickly, though.

I guess that I’ll have to admit it and work out getting another drive installed.  The DiamondMax 8 that is in there  is the same drive that’s installed in the workstations at work, and our IT guy has replaced most of them already.  Its just time, I guess.  Time to play Taps.

After trying to save my Windows XP installation as it was, I decided that its just ttoo hard on the head to figure out what’s wrong, since I don’t have all the problems layed out to me in a nice little /etc directory that I can edit with my text editor (going to learn vi some day, too).  I’m sure that its as simple as that if you know where to look, but Windows makes it far too cryptic to really figure out what’s going on inside your computer.  So, I’ll do what their own techs would have recommended as a fix after soaking me for several hundred dollars on my credit card over the phone with someone who’s command of my own language would be limited and their command of Windows XP even more limited.  I’m wiping the whole drive and reinstalling Windows.  Lets see if this will fix the issues.

…and why you should think of switching away from Microsoft.

In the last Windows Secrets newsletter, I read about a recent sneaky update that Microsoft has placed on XP and Vista machines.  If this behavior scares you, then go get Linux now.

Ironically, I was griping today to my friend, Kory, about losing my jumpdrive. I had just discovered Portable Apps and had loaded a few to make my computing life a bit more comfortable when away from home. I don’t know where I put it after loading up Miranda Messenger and testing that it would connect to the Yahoo! network from port 80, the HTTP port which your web browser uses. I pulled the USB stick out of the front of my computer after installing this app and promptly misplaced it. I spent 1/2 hour looking for it, going over the house several times. To no avail, I could not find it.

Well, Angela just found it in the dryer. Yes, its at least gone through the dryer for 1/2 hour and more likely than not, its also gone through the washer as well. So, my little 256mb Lexar Jumpdrive Secure II USB Flash drive can, at minimum, survive the heat and tumbling in the dryer and still function!

I haven’t used the secure features of this drive yet, but its nice to be able to plug it into a computer and have it simply become recognized by the operating system. I’ve yet to try it on a machine running Mac OS or Windows 9x, but I can vouch for a quick recognition with Windows 2000 and XP, as well as instant recognition under Linux.

By the way, the picture is almost a full sized image. Its about 4 mm shorter than the real drive. It reminds me of a tiny pocket knife.

Nobody paid me to write this.  I am just amazed that this thing still works.  This doesn’t mean that I won’t accept payment for the good review, though…

I’ve had a bit of a time lately with my CD Burner taking 10 minutes to burn a CD, which is ridiculous, as some newer machines can burn a whole DVD in not much different time. I didn’t get around to figuring out deeply what I could do about it. I checked the Device Manger (right click on “My Computer” and choose the “Hardware” tab. Then, select “Device Manager”) and I noticed that my CD Burner, which was on the middle of the UDMA cable (the slave position) was in PIO mode, even though I had selected “DMA, if available” as the preferred mode of the IDE controller (you can see this by double clicking the “Primary IDE Controller” in the Device Manager). Well, there is a cause for this and also a fix. More likely than not, Windows “decided” to use the much slower PIO mode when it encountered more than 6 CRC errors at one point or another. This can happen if you put in a scratched CD. If you’re a regular visitor, you know that I have kids. I’ll say no more about that.

The good news is that there’s a solution and its everywhere on the net.  It does involve editing the registry and changing a few values (or deleting and reinstalling the device - not my favorite option, since it is the disk controller that has my hard drive on it).  The even better news is that I found a page that explains the procedure, or, if you’re too lazy, you can use a little script they came up with to do the editing for you.  I ran the script.  After a reboot, I got UDMA2 for my CD Burner and a full CD (697MB at normal size and 800MB ISO images) in just over 3 minutes, which is good enough for my old machine.  Its nice to have that back.  The CPU isn’t stuck at 100% while I burn a CD either.  Now off to try Linux Mint…

So, I’ve actually gotten around to it. If you’ve been visiting on and off over the last few days, you may have caught a glimpse of this new theme as I tested it out with this blog. I’ve been working on and off on it for a few weeks now and its ready for public consumption, I think.

There are a few other things I’d like to refine on it, but this is the way that its going go look going forward. Its a tad different than anything that I’ve done before and some of the structure hasn’t been seen often at all. You’ll notice that there’s no traditional sidebar on the side. I’ve moved it below the first post and the treat from the past. I’m moving some of the clutter from the front page to its own page, such as my blogroll. I’ve kept it trimmed for a long time, although my bookmark list is looooong! So, I will get to work adding to it so that the links page is fleshed out. Once I learn how, I’ll probably change the template for that page (and maybe the archives page as well) to a two column design, like newspaper columns. That way the list of links (and older posts) will be lined up in nice neat lines to be viewed with pleasure.

I was originally going to try coding this one from scratch, which is why I didn’t have anything up months ago. If you want to know the inspiration for this theme, you should visit the site of J David Macor, who is the theme author that ported Deliciously Blue from Glossy Blue. I replaced the icons with the excellent free Drunky Love ones by Kevin Wetzels. I’ve left footer links so that you can go and visit their sites for yourself. This theme is sponsored by no one.

You’ll notice that this theme doesn’t look much like the original any more, either by color and artwork, or by design. But, if you dig into the code, you’ll see that I’ve left much of the code intact (even the css naming, which I will eventually clean up). Expect a tag cloud at one point or another and perhaps something in a big block at the bottom, once I figure out whether I want anything down there.

Tell me what you think. I really like how this has turned out - especially the double wordpress loop. I hope that you do too, as I have wanted to free myself of the sidebar for a while. If you see that something is missing, please let me know. If you have browser weirdness, let me know, especially if you use IE6 or IE7, as I haven’t done much testing with IE6 and I’ve resisted IE7 so far on my Windows computer.

Well, its late here (at least for the time I got up yesterday morning) and my eyes are barely still open, so I’m off to bed. Comments are still unmoderated locally. I’m just relying on Akismet and SSP, so you should have no trouble commenting and seeing the results immediately.

By the way, I’ve used the colors in the picture that you see above as my palette for the theme. Those leaves were plucked off a tree on the way to Caleb’s school.