volume control back

after all this time finally managed to get volume control to work again in fedora gnome. i think a new version of the volume control made the settings in my home directory invalid. running gst-register-0.8 as root makes it reregister all the settings.

when are they going to finish

uploading the internet?

motorbikes

my dad bought a new r1 last weekend. it is pretty sexy with the exhausts running under the seat. looks like a bit of a rip off of the moto guzzi that my mum was on. met mum dad richard and vicky last night at the 'diner' for a belt buster. they are off to the races at donnington park and had a group of about 6 bikers with them.

spain

off to spain on sunday which should be fun. graham is borrowing the house which will take a weight off our minds and hopefully help him out. also i want to get used to the idea that when we go travelling we can rent our house out to get a bit of income (or at least to cover our mortgage).

now ely has internet access i should be able to carry on with most of my duties while i am away. still a bit worried about billing full amount while away so i am going to make sure i communicate constantly with everyone and keep a list of what i do so that i can justify the bill if it is necessary.

poorly

i have been feeling a bit under the weather the past few days. slightly better today though. might be all the strenuous weight lifting i am doing which is causing me to feel low!

free weights

i am acheing today after trying out free weights yesterday. weights machines are good for a quick tone up but free weights really make the muscles tired and shaking. they get right into the sinews rather than isolating the muscle and trying to bulk it. it is easier to lift the weight as it is just an object you are trying to lift instead of a straight motion which makes it difficult to push properly.

weather

i wish it would make its bloody mind up! hopefully it is going to get better for the weekend...

xml is the dogs nads

i have been playing with transforming xml documents a lot recently and have come to the conclusion that xml is the dogs nads. most data tables in a database could very simply be turned into small xml files and referred to directly in xsl transformations reducing a lot of need for heavy database coding which becomes extremely complex. prototyping is made super fast in xml and i am sure if archiving could be made efficient even large tables could be turned into a large number of smaller xml docs.

very impressed!

fedora core 3

i keep updating fedora with yum. it updated my kernel but there were no updates for nvidia or ntfs kernel modules. so i stayed with the kernel-smp-2.6.11-1.27_FC3 release instead of moving onto the kernel-smp-2.6.11-1.35_FC3. Then they delivered an "upgrade" for the 27 version security module selinux. This prevented my system from booting as security was too tight. So I had to boot into the newer kernel which luckily worked but had to use the VESA drivers. Had to wait ages for the nvidia drivers. But anyway the volume control applet has just stopped working (in the 27 and 35 releases).

Surely someone at fedora must test the most basic functions of the OS (like the volume control) before upgrading the whole kernel? I would like to get more into reporting these bugs myself but with something this basic it seems staggering!

kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.11-1.35_FC3

aaaaaaaaarrrgggghhhhhh

weather

i am loving this hot weather. lounging around by the pool, going to the gym, having barbecues. i don't hate living in this country so much at the moment.

fedora core 4 released

whoopee!

fedora core 3 yum upgrade broke ndiswrapper

the strangest thing happened over the weekend. i did a yum update and when i rebooted the wireless card wouldn't load. the only major packages that were replaced were the livna nvidia rpms as far as i can tell. oh yeah, and selinux. i had to readd the modprobe ndiswrapper kernel module onto the modprobe.conf file. i wonder what package this is a part of?

anyway, got it working but it is interesting that i was reading an article about how the linux development cycle is too fast and blaming the distributions for releasing the experimental code before it has been tested.

now i take objection to this. the community is all the developers in the world and we are supposed to be using linux as our OS and also helping to develop it. now if i didn't experience this problem and report it how would it be discovered (i.e. how many people are going to have my config?). the development team can't be arsed to check every little thing before they release much needed updates to the community. they are always quick to release new patches if they accidentally break something else.

i think the only motivation behind attacking linux is jealousy of the vast and experienced user base and speedy, no-nonsense development cycle.

weather

i am getting a little tired of this shitty weather!

station mac filter

i didn't want to enable wep on my wireless router as it slows the connection down due to the overhead of encryption. also, i could not be bothered to find out how to configure wep with ndiswrapper. i also thought that i find it exciting when i manage to connect to the net with my laptop in unexpected places and thought i would leave it open for other people.

i had a change of heart however when my neighbour came up and asked if i had a wireless network. i said yes and he started blathering on about wep etc. i tried to explain that i knew all about it but these tech savvy people these days *yawn*. last thing he said was if i didn't mind it not being secure he would start using it.

so i added the station mac filter so only the pcs on my network can use it. so there!

i have realised maybe we don't really want to share our stuff with everyone. what an ideal world it would be if we did!

poland

just got back from poland. it is a really cool place - cheap beer and really nice home cooked food. you get around 6 szlotty to the pound and a beer will cost about 5 of those as will a meal!

you can still see the socialist influance but they have already come a long way to eradicating any sign of it. they are very romantic people - they tend to go out in couples and be very quiet and touchy feely. the people are amazingly good looking - you could spend a day in a bar just watching the women walk past and never have to look away!

on the down side they do not seem to sell macdonalds breakfasts - it is only big macs for breakfast when you are desperate enough to need a macdonalds i am afraid!

eclipse user library

cool! i always had loads of jars listed in my eclipse projects which got in the way and now i have figured out how to package them into a user library. what i need to do next is get tomcat to link to this user library and then it will be able to run the appz. this should make deployment a bit easier too. who knows, my war files may actually deploy automatically!

detergents in petrol

my car manual says that i need to make sure i use petrol which doesn't have detergents in it. on close examination all fuels now contains 'engine cleaning detergents' even asda shite petrol.

now why this stupid rise in adding detergents to petrol? i don't remember engines getting their insides all dirty before. i thought engines were meant to be a bit dirty (like christina aguilera).

could it be that instead of selling us the product we want at the lowest price they are 'adding value' by diluting the product with cheap shit detergents which degrade the fuel economy of the car etc.

wankers

co-op fairy cakes

i am going to blow the lid off this whole corporate scandal. co-op are selling fairy cakes which have not been cooked right and the bottom half of the fairy cake is getting stuck to the paper.

they have the cheek to charge twice as much as asda for their fairy cakes based on the 'convenience' of their stores (as if anyone doesn't have a car these days) then they sell inferior products like this.

i've got my eye on you co-op you evil evil faceless corporation

macdonalds sauces

when i used to drive thru macdonalds i got used to asking for the sauce at the first window. they were always happy to provide whatever sauces you want no questions asked. then one day the reply became 'they will give you the sauces at the 3rd window'. after driving to the window, parking, waiting for them to get this and that and shove it at you i have completely forgotten about the sauces.

when i get home i realise i have forgotten the sauces and its too late. if i were 'eating in' i would just ask for the sauce and get it so what reason would they have for trying to deprive the 'drive thru' customer of sauce?

especially when a 'chicken mcnugget' meal depends almost entirely on sauce and they don't even do the 'what sauce do you want with your chicken mcnugget' shit any more.

and macdonalds wonder why they are going down the shit tube. they invented consistent food and now they are trying to change it. way to cripple a winning formula bud.