whoops

accidentally deleted the /usr/share/java file which had all the jars in. now i need to backtrack and remove all the rpms which had those files and reinstall. the reason i was messing about there in the first place was because it didn't seem to be picking up on the jars in the jvm. oh well

jpackage

also - rather than adding all the jar files in WEB-INF/lib i can just install the package (making sure to add it on the server too!). this is going to make my war files a lot lighter and ant file simpler.

hooray - breakthrough!

previously i would unpack a version of java and link all my programs in there. now i have discovered jpackage which allows me to integrate a really nice solid tested java platform inside linux. it has made things 10 times easier, and now i have tomcat and eclipse sitting on the same platform and i just need to put it onto the server too. wierdly all the fonts have gone even nicer all over my system and things seem to have calmed down a bit. it is almost as if i had been working by trial and error a little bit before and now i have stabilised in relation to java.

there are still some tricky bits like building rpms from nosrc rpms but that is fairly easy when you get the hang of it. also getting java3d to work was a bit funny but now i am more confident. happy bunny today!

cpuspeed

my computer kept overheating and turning itself off which is worrying not to mention annoying. then i noticed that cpuspeed had turned itself back on and was trying to control the processor speed (badly). but this made me look at the processes that were running before the conk out and i noticed that eclipse and yum when they run make the processor run at a constant 100% which explains why my fan has been a bit loud. now i have disabled cpuspeed i don't crash any more but can't run these two important applications without my fan making me go deaf!

i may roll back to an earlier version of eclipse (i have already gone from 3.01 to 3.0) but i think the problem may be something else. if i was a paranoid type i might think it was to do with java and suns recent honeymoon with microsoft!

asda bread

i have noticed a few times now when buying "brand name" bread from asda that it is stale. the bread has been useless for sandwiches, and toast is the only thing it is good for. i thought these bread makers were going downhill and obviously started buying asda bread thinking it was all freshly made etc. then one day i bought one of my favourite "leading brand" breads from the spar and it was great! fluffy tasty not at all stale. needless to say i won't be buying bread at asda again and i think these cheap tactics show how the supermarkets are muscling in on everyones territory.

new speakers

at the weekend i nicked my brothers old amplifier and speakers. the amplifier is a pure sound yamaha 180 watt @ 8 ohms and the speakers were minimax. the sound was dreadful and muffled. martin came round last night and we tried the speakers off rosana's stereo and the sound was perfect, so today i went to richer sounds on mansfield road and bought some mission speakers. now the sound is really great so i am listening to loads of tunes to hear all the bits that i have been missing on all the shite stereos i have been listening to.

essex

went to essex for dinner on saturday. it was really nice although i am drinking far too much at the moment. it was a proper roast beef dinner except with no yorkshire puddings!

the whole family were there, my brothers and parents and babies, except for vicky and rebecca who haven't come to a family do yet.

sofias family

sofias family have arrived from spain last night to stay for a week. they have brought loads of lovely spanish food and wine. we are taking sofias sister out tonight for cocktails. i am probably going to get really trashed.

reminds me that i haven't had a holiday for ages (even though i took 6 weeks off in summer). i think i will take it easy this week.

ah ha

there is another line in /etc/security/console.perms which has dri in it and this needs to be removed or it keeps setting the permissions back on the nvidia files. also there is something wrong with the driver that it doesn't copy the nvidia dev files into /etc/udev.

you would have thought someone at nvidia would have tested it worked before releasing it!

just remembered from last time

lines on video are related to not having the nvidia driver set up properly.

FC2 -> FC3

have now upgraded to FC3. it has changed quite smoothly. the main problem is reinstalling the nvidia driver. i have heard there is a community version of the nvidia driver which would make it ten times easier (also i should be using ndiswrapper for wireless instead of driverloader).

anyway, my glxgears does not work due to a permissions problem with the driver and now i can either log in as myself without 3d rendering, or log in as root with. this is quite a setback considering my career is programming 3d graphics

FC2 to FC3

going to upgrade to FC3 today. already started and have a huge load of packages downloading. using yum to do it from this tutorial here.

has new kernel, new evolution and it looks as if gnome is upgraded too. exciting!

please lord do not let me be rendered computerless!

panda chinese restaurant

went for an all you can eat buffet at the panda in sherwood last night. i was suprised that it was pretty good. woke up with a really dry mouth though so it must have been generously salted!

finally got my hard disk

had to drive to mansfield yesterday to pick up my hard disk as the delivery guys wouldn't bring it over again. it had to be sent to graham's house as the company cards are registered there now and simply wouldn't deliver to mine on first order.

it is a bit on the chunky side and has a really nasty bright blue light on it that flickers. i wish there was some way to disable it.

i have already transferred a lot of crap off my computer and freed up about 25 gigs. i am sure my computer is running a bit faster, then again i did only have a few megs left on my drive.

crap expands to fill the space given to it...

cold day today

it is brass monkeys today. the car doors were stuck shut when i tried to open them. thought the door handles were going to snap off! the view from my new house is really far over loads of houses. if i was an insulation salesman i could tell exactly which houses needed roof insulation from here. most of the houses have snow on but there are still one or two...

anyway, global warming seems like a good idea on a day like this!

bought some badminton racquets

after russell introduced me to badminton some weeks ago i have finally bought some racquets. this should save me a bob or two on racquet hire and now i can practice with sofia at david lloyd.

the racquets were so cheap though (£5 for two including three shuttlecocks). i would advise getting better equipment. the racquets are okay but the shuttlecocks are made of cork and if they get anywhere near the rim of the racquet they fly off at weird angles.

can be alright if it means the other person can't hit it though!

ordered my 250gb hard disk

fed up of my hard disk running out all the time so i ordered the HD. bit of a reckless business decision though...

external hard drive

i really want an external hard drive to put all my data. every CD i have seems to break after five minutes especially with my evil son scratching them and playing frisbee.

i need one at least 250GB like this one hd. maybe use the company card....

the trouble with the external hard drive thing is that i can see myself loving having it, and keeping all my stuff there, and being able to plug it into other computers etc. but after a while i will get paranoid about backing up and need a second identical disk to copy everything on to. i will then need a program which compares the content of the two drives and just copies the changes for speed and i have not checked this out on linux yet (yes yes i know it would be easy on windows).

then again, who says my hard drive on my laptop might not fail anyway. i would still be up shit creek. actually what if the web server breaks down? that has all my cvs on it!! (note to self: buy new machine with raid disks)

we cannot let ourselves get worried about these things.

i suppose

i should post when i have solved a problem as well as reporting the problems. after russell read my blog he got the idea that linux is hard work. well i choose to live on the cutting edge so i always have to put up with the fact that upgrades may cause errors. i do try and commit bugs to gnome etc. but linux is great, there are no problems with it on my laptop at the moment.

the thing is when people ask me - "what do you do when windows suddenly does something unexplainable and shit like it always does?" i say put linux on! it is more stable and i never have problems like that any more.

everything is the way i want it on my computer now

moved into my new house

have moved into my new house with views over sherwood in nottingham. it is a modernish house (1973) and is really warm compared to my old house (pre 1900). oh yeah and not having to park my car on the road any more, i hated that! especially in the shithole i used to live in when people would beep at you because you were blocking their way!!! have a garage now too which has basically become a dumping ground for all my crap. need to fix it up with shelving etc. still it is warm and dry unlike my old damp cellar