Wed 13 Sep 2006

I have found a new window manager, and it brings me joy. Its name is OpenBox. I had been a long time BlackBox user, but always kinda wanted to get rid of the slit. OpenBox has no slit. I had tried fluxbox, but it just didn't appeal to me, you know? Probably the configuration in Debian was more pain than I was willing to deal with at the time.

Anyway, I have finally figured out how to use virtual desktops, or at least in a useful way. Most of my fiddling around with linux has been on laptops (installed on 3 different ones to date) and I therefore never had a scroll button. Well, at work it was decided to take the laptop mentioned below and use it as a floater for the entire office (oh, the humanity!) and buy me a desktop instead.

Dinner's ready, to be continued...
Posted after work. [ /computers ]

Sat 19 Aug 2006

I realized that I screwed up in my post below. The /dev/uba* entry is created by the USB block device code in the Linux kernel. This code is not the best choice to use, though, for some reason which eludes me -- all the cool kids say that you should use the USB storage code, which does require scsi emulation, while the block device code does not. When I configured my kernel, I missed some obscure configuration option which hosed the scsi system's recognition of the flash drive, and the block device code swooped in and took over.

Man, what a pain.

Posted just after the post below [ /computers ]

In order to fulfill the name of this website, I have decided to list the best Dire Straits songs for posterity.

1. Follow Me Home, from Communique
2. Romeo and Juliet, from Making Movies
3. Brothers in Arms, from Brothers in Arms, appropriately enough
4. Down to the Waterline, from the self-titled debut
5. Tunnel of Love, from Making Movies
6. Portobello Belle, from Communique
7. Where do You Think You're Going?, from Communique
8. Private Investigations, from Love Over Gold
9. How Long, from On Every Street
10. Ride Across the River, from Brothers in Arms

Ok, let's do a comparison to the Dire Straits greatest hits cd... Well, they got Brothers in Arms, Romeo and Juliet and Tunnel of Love right. These are not Dire Straits best songs, though. It makes me happy to know that with a CD burner, I can make my own dang greatest hits cd, and avoid the even-numbered tracks on Communique. Something tells me, though, that the RIAA is not happy that I can do that, even though I do own just about all of Dire Straits' stuff...
Posted pretty dang early in the morning (couldn't sleep) [ /society ]

Thu 08 Jun 2006

I got a new toy -- a Dell Inspiron B130 laptop -- at work. I decided to wipe XP and install Debian on it. With all the crap that Dell puts on a new computer, can you blame me? So I spent quite a bit of time trying to tie everything together -- ("let's see... backport of X.org to sarge? check. Hack to update bios on every reboot for screen resolution? check. Compile ALSA drivers from source to get the sound card to work? check. Script to flash the firmware of the printer every time, too? check.")

One thing eluded me, though -- the USB flash drive. The most recent kernel (well, not anymore -- I used 2.6.16.16, but they're up to 2.6.16.20 now) didn't add /dev/sda1 like everything says it's supposed to! ARGGHHH! But, I figured out today that apparently Linus's war on SCSI emulation in the CD-Burning arena has expanded to the USB province too, and the device name was actually /dev/uba1. Or maybe Linus's war on SCSI emulation had nothing to do with it, I have no idea. (hey, if you can't pontificate ignorantly on the internet, where CAN you ignorantly pontificate?)

All I know is that nowhere on the web could I find reference to this device, so I'm blogging it so it'll be out there now. Want to get your USB flash drive to work in a recent kernel? Look for /dev/uba1, NOT /dev/sda1.

Much props to this guy, who (though he doesn't know it, unless he reads his server logs a little too intently) helped me immensely, first with a nice new deb of amaroK, then with an updated deb of udev that doesn't conflict with either ALSA or hotplug. Mr. Stosberg, I salute you.
Posted around lunchtime [ /computers ]

Wed 08 Mar 2006

Not much from me recently, I admit. I've been busy -- or was that lazy? Hrmm.. Anyway, I have been silent long enough. It is necessary for me to pronounce that the Great Outdoor Fight is genius. If there isn't such a thing, there should be.

Man, I can't believe they took out Beef! This is tragic...
Posted pretty early in the morning. [ /society/popculture ]