Palm Springs

So we are here in Palm Springs California for our 9th anniversary. It is hot out here; we are talking 104. The mountains are beautiful in this desert. This city is literaly in the middle of the desert. During the day we really don’t see anybody out and about and if they are, they are in the car with the Air Condition on max. The people are friendly and we found this soul food place where the guy working there was originally from london but spent quite a bit of time in the five boroughs of New York. Here’s some pictures:

View from our balcony

Router Tests

Hello world, I haven’t written anything in a while. I ran some test on my router over the weekend and I’m getting 15 mbps down and  2 mbps. I am happy that everything is working great. I redid my qos (quality of service) on my router and I pulled a 70 mb torrent file at 1.62 mbps. I got in quite a bit of gears 2 since they added exp to the horde playlist; I received the seasoned gear achievement. I may re-implement the opendns but I’m not sure right now.

Until then,

xxuriahxx

Amarok 1.4 Update

So I woke up this morning and I got ready to sync my Ipod to amarok and my amarok was gone. The guy that hosts the PPA for amarok 1.4 messed up and now he created a new ppa for it.

MESS UPDATE! There’s been some breakage recently because of a mess I made with an update.

The *ppa4 version should now be available. If your Amarok got uninstalled you should be able to simply re-install it. If you use apt and it gave you dependency errors, they should have gone away now.

PPA UPDATE!
I’ve created a separate PPA just for Amarok 1.4, I recommend you switch to that one. I might publish other things here in the future, but the new one will only contain Amarok 1.4. It will also get a bit more testing.

So based on Bogdan Butnaru’s recommendation, I switched to the new ppa and voila; I was able to reinstall amarok 1.4 with no problem. I hope you do the same.

Microblogging with Pidgin

As the weeks go on microblogging is becoming more popular. Since pidgin is very versatile, let’s put it to work with some microblogging in ubuntu.

Lets add the gpg first, open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0CF459B8DF37ED8B

Enter your password to validate that you have sudo rights.

Next add your respective repository via system-administration-software sources:

Hardy

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

Intrepid

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Jaunty

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

and in the terminal do:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

Now let’s enable the plugin, Open Pidgin and in Tools > Plugins and check “Twitgin”

Navigate to Accounts > Manage Accounts, click “Add” and in the “Protocol” List, select TwitterIM, Identica or Laconica:

Guitar Session

So, I guess there is a first for everything. This is my very first upload to youtube. I was trying to figure out how to work my web cam since I’m getting ready to write a song to enter a contest. I’m not a pro at this encoding and decoding deal but I followed the instructions on the you-tube website and I uploaded my video. I’m playing guitar hero on medium. As I get better and better with the process of you-tubing, I will upload more videos. So without further banter, here is my post attempting to play Pat Benatar’s “Hit me with your best shot”.

Perfectbuntu

Perfectbuntu is a linux script that allows you to install some basic apps and codecs to get your ubuntu machine running without much hassle. Some of the things that it installs include but is not limited to:

• Flash
• Windows fonts
• archiver options
• Skype
• Avant Windows manager
• Spam filters

To install it, download the file and save it to your desktop.

• Right click and go to properties.
• Go to the permissions tab and check the box (see picture) and close.

• Now, double click the perfectbuntu on the desktop and run in terminal.

• Once you do that you will get a screen similar to this one

• This screen (above) tells you that the version 2.1 perfectbuntu is created by Robbie ferguson of Category5.tv. It detects that I’m running the 32 bit version of Jaunty and prompts me for my super user password. Enter your password for your ubuntu machine. From there you will be asked a series of questions begining with the screen below. Answer the questions according to your machine setup and the script will do the rest; Enjoy!

• Please use at your own risk!

Amarok 2

Amarok 2 comes with the new ubuntu release and although it brings a new look to amarok it is still not quite ready. I tried to work with it but it only frustrated me so I wanted my 1.4 back.

Go to your synaptic package manager and uninstall amarok.

afterwards go to your software sources and add these lines:

• deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

• deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Once you add those lines and do an update, go to your terminal and do a

• sudo apt-get install amarok14

Spirit of Ubuntu

If you are still sleeping hibernating under a rock or something then you probably haven’t heard that the new ubuntu distro (Jaunty Jackalope) is releasing tomorrow. I upgraded my 8.10 T41 last night and did a dod wipe on my tower and did a clean install there. Here’s the thing though: The first cd that I burned of Jaunty to update my machines was burned under a windows machine (not my own) which didnt work. I got some memorex CDs and used my wifi server which has a burner and reburned the Jaunty Release Candidate CD under Intrepid and that worked flawlessly. Its seem tough sometimes to explain to folks how “really” good Ubuntu is. It’s just that good! I’m so glad its free because the value of open source is priceless. Microsoft would charge an arm and a leg for this distribution if they could. You can grab the release candidate here or wait till tomorrow. You can also request the official CD for free.

This time around Robbie Fergusson of Category5.tv is featured on the ubuntu CD. Robbie’s show is a tech based show offering free support via his live show and site. Below is the video which will be featured on the ubuntu CD:

Ubuntu is only getting better. Get a tour here.

Outrun

You have a girl by your side and you have a nice car, what more do you want? Outrun races in this past Wednesday and I must say that I like it a lot. You can pick it up for 800 Microsoft points. The game play is very clean and crisp; something we all come to expect from outrun titles. The music tracks that we’ve come to know and love (Splash wave, magical sound shower and passing breeze) are there and a few additional ones (Risky ride, Shiny World, Night Flight and Life was a bore). The game modes are as follows:

• Outrun mode – the forever traditional get to your destination
• Time Attack mode – beat the ghost car times  – get like a 4.50.00
• Heart attack mode – meet your girl’s demands by getting as many hearts as you can.
• Outrun mode 15 course – try to reach the goal with your girl through 15 courses.

The selection of cars that are readily available are:

• F50
• Enzo Ferrari
• 360 Spider
• F40
• Testarossa
• 288 GTO
• 512 BB
• Dino 246 GTS
• 365 GTS/4 Daytona
• 250 GTO

In the multiplayer mode you can play 6 player unranked outrun matches. You can also host your own and let people show up in your room. One of the achievements is to “Arrive at all goals (A-E)” and one of the quickest way (I believe) to get that is to:

• Host an online match
• Start your stage setting to start at A and change it after every match till you get to E (make sure you finish and do not get disqualified)

One of the things that I did notice is when you switch your camera (at times) and can be glitchy, this also happens sometimes when you crash. The game also does not have a multiplayer local mode which is usually a turn off for me but I made an exception on this one. Overall the game is great fun for most ages.

Dishwasher Dead Samurai

So the game is awesome, if you haven’t played it. I actually didn’t think i’d be having this much fun with it. So the story goes, once a crummy dishwasher who was brutally murdered, now he is one of th coolest and deadliest ninjas (right now). Check it out on the xbla for 800 points.