Archive for November 9th, 2009

Project updates.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Project e update: I took the machine up to 2GB of memory earlier this week; it turned out to be much harder than I expected, mostly because getting the memory access door off the machine took more effort than I expected.

I just finished doing a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on Project e; I went the clean install route, instead of doing an upgrade in place, because there were some things I wanted to clean out, and I didn’t really have a whole lot invested in the current system. (However, I didn’t re-partition and blow away /home.) So far, wireless seems much more stable; no connection drops yet. Ethernet just works, straight out of the box (no loading of modules) and Bluetooth seems to work as well, modulo some flakiness in listing devices.

This install also took more effort, and more time, than I expected. However, much of that was my fault; the process for creating USB install disks changed from 9.04 to 9.10, and the instructions on the Ubuntu website are not clear on how to do that under OS X. I ended up having to move the 9.10 ISO over to the netbook and use the USB startup disk creator to make a bootable flash drive. I don’t see this as an Ubuntu problem as much as a “thought I knew what I was doing, should have read the docs first” problem.

Question: does anyone know of a good Karmic-compatible eeePC tray utility, now that eeepc-tray has been end of lifed?

6.00 update: I’ve been tied up dealing with some personal issues that I don’t want to go into here (for reasons of other people’s privacy) and haven’t had as much time as I would like to work on this. I’ve gone through all of lecture 2, and I’m hoping to knock out the assignment and move on to lecture 3 this week.

School: Registered for CSYS 4334, “Implementing Information Systems In Organizations” (in other words, more SQL Server 2005) and CSYS 4330, “Advanced Networking/Network Security” next semester. That second one should be fun.

Posted in asus_eee, Bluetooth, Lazyweb, linux, netbook, project_e, Radio, School, WiFi | 1 Comment »

Random notes: November 9, 2009.

Monday, November 9th, 2009

The NYTPicker has an interesting post up related to the whole Brighton Beach Memoirs fiasco; what they’re reporting is that the failure of this revival may have had a great deal to do with an unusually restrictive advertising deal the NYT made with the producers of the show.

With the understanding that both of these people are good friends of mine (can you say “blogrolling”? I knew you could.) I’m linking to Lawrence’s interview with the actor we’ve hired to play Karl Rehn of KR Training.

Consider this an official endorsement of Child’s Play. I have donated money to them in the past and will do so again this year if I have any to spare. (I just checked: Yes! The Desert Bus guys are doing it again this year! November 20th; mark your calendar.)

Edited to add: by way of Jimbo, who killed Chicago crime reporter Jake Lingle?

Edited to add 2: I forgot that I wanted to note this LAT story, mostly because I don’t know what to make of it. The headline and sub-head imply that the main concern of the article is “Private citizens can fly high-performance jet aircraft? Oh, noes!” However, buried towards the bottom of the article is a more interesting story; allegations that the FAA investigation into this case was sandbagged. (I was wondering where a convicted felon gets the money to purchase one of those planes; however, Google tells me that a 1973 L-39C Albatros goes for around $269,500. Or somewhat less than a house in LA.)

Posted in Clippings, Endorsements, Geek, Media, Planes, Theatre | Comments Closed