And so Monday came and with less than 30mins left, the day will finally be over. Today wasn’t that bad for the beginning of the work week. Work was less hectic than normal. Just have to replaced a couple of monitors today. Nah, nothing was wrong with them. My people are getting this new self check-in thingy in one of the clinical areas that would “require” them to have 22 inch monitors. Really don’t know if having more monitor real estate would really matter but my department did buy them new monitors. I just feel it is an excessive waste of resources.
I finally successfully installed Lucid Lynx on my back-up work computer. Yes, we do have primary and backup work computers at work (and some have 4-5 computers). I tried to install Ubuntu on my back-up computer last Friday but the ISO that I downloaded initially was a bust. I have to re-download and installed it this afternoon. Luckily, it didn’t have to wait that long for the download to finish. Hopkins have their own Ubuntu mirror. I downloaded the whole ISO in less than 5mins. Booyah! On my home computer, Lucid has been running since last Thursday night. I have downloaded the ISO at home as soon as soon as Canonical posted the new ISOs available.
So far I have no complaints with the latest Ubuntu. I know some people are griping that it is way too dumb down now. For some reason, I agree with them but I don’t really care anymore. Gone are idealism of hacking and long sleepless nights of geekiness. I just want things to work, and if possibly out of the box. I pretty much don’t have time anymore to research, compile and fix things just to have them work. I am also loving the idea of integrating my online “social” life in the desktop. I guess Ubuntu developers do listen to “normal” people. 
I will be posting a 1 week review of Ubuntu soon. I think it is just right that I try and work on it first before I do final judgment.
So for now my friends, adios! Loving the soothing music of Oranges and Lemons right now and I have to get some me time before I give my baby his midnight milk. Peace y’all.
Gone are the cold days and frigid nights. Spring is finally here. Things are budding off the ground and the warm weather is slowly permeating over Baltimore. As for me, things has been great and there’s an air of excitement over at our house. First, wifey is finally done with school! Now everyone in our household could give a sigh of relief. Even me. Two, airsoft season is finally back and even though there is lesser chance for me to get to the field, it’s still fun to look forward to it neverthenless. Three, hmm, what is three? I have not thought of that yet.
Today, me and the family spent most of the day away from the house starting with the kid’s weekly gymnastic class. Me and wifey see a lot of improvement with my daughter’s performance but my son seems to be out of focus. Will need to follow up and do a little pep-talk if that would help. After a brief TV window shopping at BJs for our basement, we had some hotdogs and drove to my fraternity brother Neil’s house. Took me more than an hour to drive all the way to Germantown, MD. He has move farther away from where I live but I am still thankful that I have someone in my group from back home an hour’s drive away. After a brief chicka-chicka and lunch of lechon and humba, we have to go back home to Baltimore immediately because wifey has to prepare for work. Evening was spent at a neighbor’s house for a party. Think about it, we have free food all day today.
I also started experimenting on this new thing I’ve been seeing online – foursquare. Not really familiar with it yet and I’ll still have to learn more about it.
Also, the past few week I have been working and communicating with my fraternity brothers back home in the Philippines to slowly rejuvenate the organization that we have started when we were in our teens. It has been a slow and laborious process due to people’s hardheadedness. We have to bring out all the diplomatic tricks in our bag of magic to make things happen, albeit slowly. Hopefully, me and the founding brothers are on the right path now.
Ah, good day today. Couldn’t ask for anything more.
Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged family, rants
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For today, we will have to deviate from the normal linux geek squak and talk about something else that I am very much into: Indie Pop. No, it is not an independent release of Britney’s latest album . Contrary to what most people think, when I say indiepop, I am not talking about how the music was released but more on how the music sounds. Indiepop is a genre of alternative rock that originated from England in the early 80s.
Original C86 Compilation cover
The genre gain momentum and finally gain its own distinctive sound when the British magazine NME released a compilation of music from new independent (as in not from a major label) bands. The music from the compilation was characterized by jangly guitars with melodic lyrics. This compilation became a major influence and guiding light to a whole bunch of artist and bands who made the compilation as a reference point to a totally new genre.
Aside from indiepop, the genre also became know as, especially in the United States, as Tweepop. Other names given to the new genre includes C86, after the compilation itself, or Cutie music. If you are interested in learning more about this genre, look up this Wikipedia article.
I came to know indiepop back when I was still in Cebu. Me and my friends watched a show for a couple of bands from Manila. We were actually expecting a “new wave” post punk band but instead got this new type music that was sweet to the ears. I pretty much started learning and listening more about it and finally got to know the bands and people who performed on that show. Sonnet LVIII was a very huge influenced on me changing my taste of music from punk to indiepop 
.
Anyway, enough of my “lecture”. It would be easier to know the music if we could hear it so listen up, enjoy and tell me what you think.
Colour Contest – Me & Your Melanie
And oh yeah, this band is actually from the Philippines
As my close friends in the Freenode community where I hang out have known, I am very much particular with the applications I install on my machine depending on what desktop environment I am currently using. If I am using Gnome, I prefer to install just Gnome apps and if KDE, just KDE apps. One of the reasons why I love using KDE is that I could install Skype without having to integrate it on my desktop environment. Skype is a widely known application that allows voice calls over the internet. Skype, being a QT application, fits well with my KDE desktop
Installing Skype on 32bit machine is not really a problem but on a 64bit machine, I realized I have to a bit much more and have to install a couple more packages to make it work. I initially install Skype just by selecting it from Yast but after clicking on the icon, it just wouldn’t start. I tried to run it from the command line and it gave me an error about missing files. To fix this issue, follow the steps below:
- Go to KMenu -> Computer -> Install Software. Put in the root password and click OK.
- On the search box, type in Skype, and click search. Also search for the following packages that Skype needs to run on a 64bit machine: xorg-x11-libXv-32bit, libqt4-32bit and lastly, libqt4-x11-32bit. I think the problem here is that there is no 64bit version of Skype yet, hence, requiring, 32bit versions of the librarires.
Search of Skype in Yast
- Click Accept and wait for install to finish.
- After the install, look for Skype in KMenu -> Applications -> Internet -> Other Software. Login or create a new Skype account.
Skype Login Screen
Enjoy and email me if you have questions.
Johan Gottlieb Fichte from Wikipedia
As you might have noticed, most Linux distros have their version naming conventions or codenames. I have always wondered if OpenSUSE have codenames for their releases. A bit of googling answered my question. Actually, OpenSUSE just started this trend recently with the release of v11.2. Version 11.2 is name Fichte after the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I personally have not heard of Fichte before but I guess he was one of those really good philosopher in his time. Really was not into philosophy when I was in college. I find it kind of boring. I think OpenSUSE is naming their releases after European philosophers with the following scheduled releases:
- November 2009: “Fichte” 11.2
- July 2010: “Rousseau” 11.3
- March 2011: “Voltaire” 12.0
- November 2011: “Lessing” 12.1
This actually makes sense because I have also noticed that OpenSUSE is quite popular with European users. Now I wonder if the Koala’s karma should be good enough Fichte’s consciousness.
After deciding to switch to OpenSUSE, one of the things I first noticed is how ugly looking the default desktop looks (KDE). I didn’t last for a week and I switched back to Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I have been using KDE before and between the more common Linux desktop interfaces, I know KDE should look much better. I decided to give it one more go and I later realized that the main problem was how the font looks on the KDE desktop. I googled it a bit and found this guide and also some more information from OpenSUSE’s community wiki how to enable font smoothing in KDE. This is how I did it on my desktop:
1. Install the freetype2 package by clicking on this link.
2. After installing the package using Yast, open up a Terminal window and type in the command below using a non-root account to open KDE’s font configuration.
kcmshell fonts
Alternatively, you could also do the gooey way. Go to KMenu -> Configure Desktop -> Appearance -> Fonts.
KDE Style Window
3. Make sure “Use anti-aliasing” is Enabled. Click the Configure button.
KDE Font Configuration Window
4. Put a check mark on “Use sub-pixel rendering:” check box. Select “Full” or “Medium” on “Hinting style:” depending on your monitor.
Anti Alias Settings
5. Click OK to close the window, and click OK to close the Font Settings.
6. Restart your desktop and log back on again. This should improve how your fonts shows up on your desktop.
I believe I am one of the most fickle minded person in the world. I might be going for one direction today, and tomorrow, I might be go to the other totally opposite direction. And if things does not turn out fine, I might go back to the first direction I was initially taking. Forgive me if I am confusing you. I myself is confused but that sums up what happened the past few weeks with me deciding which Linux distribution I will be sticking with.
Anyway, I have decided a couple of weeks back to start using OpenSUSE again. I initially started working with the default KDE desktop in OpenSUSE but gave up within a couple of days. I was immediately back in Ubuntu. I don’t know but for some reasons, the whole KDE look doesn’t feel right with me anymore. Maybe I have fallen in love with Gnome. Then, just recently again, I installed OpenSUSE again and this time with the Gnome desktop. For the past couple of years, I have been mostly jumping around OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and little bit of Gentoo. To describe this predicament, lets take an analogy of three sister that have been once your girlfriends. Gentoo would be the eldest sister, the hot and intelligent one but way too high maintenance. I have totally gave up on Gentoo. It was just too much of a hassle maintaining it and working on it. I am not saying it is not good, in fact I feel it is one of the best Linux distribution out there. Ubuntu on the other hand is like the cute little friendly well liked tomboyish sister everybody knows. She is always cool to be with and everybody seems to know her. It seems everything about her is an open book and you really don’t have to do much to satisfy her. And OpenSUSE is the demure, little bit shy younger sister of both Gentoo and Ubuntu. She is the best of both worlds. She’s hot and yet easy to get along with. Everybody thinks she is a snub but she really isn’t. There’s just not much to talk about her maybe because she has been hanging with the wrong crowd you probably don’t want to be involved with. Yet, there’s things to be discovered about her and she eventually will surprise everyone with her charm. And so I have finally decided to stick around with her, until another one comes around.
Seriously now, the primary reason I have gone back to OpenSUSE is because there is still lots of things to discover with this distro compared to Ubuntu. Yet, it is easy enough so not take all the little left in my day working on making things work the way I want it to be. I have also realized that there’s really not much people contributing sharing information on how things work in OpenSUSE. I am aiming to hopefully fill a little of that void by posting my experiences in using OpenSUSE in my daily work and personal life. OpenSUSE has so far impressed me and I think there’s a lot of things that I could probably work on and share with people, who like me, would also like to try this nice distro.
Posted in Linux
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Tagged Linux, ramblings
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When this year started, I made a promise to myself that I would try to make things better for myself and for my everyone else around me by trying to finish and complete tasks that I should be doing. The word here is should. I have started a lot of things lastly and up until now, they remain in a state of limbo. I really did try to finish each and everyone of them on my list of things to do, but a lot of factors are contributing to my failure. One of it is time. There’s just not enough of them. It’s like some kind of math equation that I have failed to understand during my college statistics class. The more X, the less Y would be. Y would be t ime and X would be everything I have ever wanted to do with my life.
A have tried to read the book Getting Things Done by Dr. David Allen but up until now, I have not gone beyond the 2nd chapter. So much for reading a book on how to stop procrastinating. I have been procrastinating to read and finish that book. I have tried to use lists, reminders, even bought apps for my iPhone to help me. I am still on the same hole I have been.
I think it’s really up to me to fix this situation.
I think the problem is me.
Me.
Time for me to solve this problem, but how?
Posted in General
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Tagged ramblings
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My desktop and applications after I fixed the font settings
My desktop wallpaper
And so here I am again. Back to OpenSUSE for a lot of unclear reasons, except maybe of boredom. : D
Posted in Linux
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Tagged Linux, screenshots
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Finally back to reality, a cold and dreary reality of the northern east coast. It has already been three days since we came back from a very long road trip down to Orlando, FL and it took all those three days for me to recover from all the driving that I have done. Not really complaining about the driving. In fact, I have been yearning for a long drive for a couple of months now. This road trip really filled up the need. I drove all the way to Florida and almost three quarters back. Somewhere along Richmod, VA, my body started to go downhill and nothing could stop me from falling asleep. A shot of the “5-hour energy” drink and two red bulls didn’t help at all. It just made my stomach churned like crazy.
One of the benefits of living here in the continental United States is you get to hop in to your car, get a full tank of gas, and drive until it wears you out. There’s just a multitude of places that you could go to. Although I have already done this once before, this time around I get to record my tracks using an iPhone app called GPSed. It basically recorded all the pertinent details about the trip including the total time I was moving, total stop time and also adds pictures I took using my iPhone camera. The total time shows the time since I started driving south until I turn off tracking when we got home. To check out my tracks, click here.
This latest road trip of ours, and if I combined it with previous road trip to Portland, ME, will mean that I have driven more than 80% of the whole eastern US seaboard. Pretty cool. Now, if only my HC is up to the challenge of us driving westward, that would be really cool.
I will be posting more details of this whole holiday in Florida once I get the chance to download my pictures from my camera. I have not even unpacked yet. Strangely, I realized, I am still the same old procrastinating me .
Posted in General
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Tagged ramblings, trips
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