The Captain’s (B)log

Nearly died recently.  I definitely want to blog about that.

1. How old will you be in five years?
32 Earth years.
2. Who did you spend at least two hours with today?
All sorts of people.  Nina, lots of people at work.
3. How tall are you?
6 feet even.
4. What do you look forward to most in the next six weeks?
The start of the new Mad Men season.
5. What’s the last movie you saw?
Elephant.
6. Who was the last person you called?
My pops
7. Who was the last person to call you?
My pops
8. What was the last text message you received?
From Nina
9. Who was the last person to leave you a voicemail?
Don’t know, my voicemail is broke.
10. Do you prefer to call or text?
Both.
11. What were you doing at 12am last night?
Sleeping, I think.
12. Are your parents married/separated/divorced?
Married
13. When is the last time you saw your mom?
Last weekend
14. What color are your eyes?
Blue
15. Do you own slippers?
Yes
16. What are you wearing right now?
Nighttime clothes.
17. What is your favorite Christmas song?
O Christmas Tree
18. Where is your favorite place to be?
Home
19. Where is your least favorite place to be?
High School.  Yay, I don’t have to go anymore.
20. Africa-NewZealand-Japan?
Japan, land of toilets that talk to you
21. Where do you think you’ll be in 10 years?
The Land of Ennui, unless we have space stations by then.
22. Do you tan or burn?
Burn all over.
23. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
The boogerman
24. What was the last thing that really made you laugh?
Thinking about MC Hammer
25. How many TVs do you have in your house?
Two, though one isn’t used.
26. When did you last get in a argument?
A few hours ago.
27. Do you have a laptop or desktop computer?
Lots of both.
28. Do you sleep with or without clothes on?
Depends
29. What color are your walls?
White, I think.
30. How many pillows do you sleep with?
Two.
31. What is your favorite season?
Winter, winter, and more winter.
32. What do you like about fall?
The feeling of the world going to sleep.
33. What do you like about winter?
It’s cold.  And still.  …And quiet.
34. What do you like about the summer?
Everybody seems happier, even if I’m just hot all the time.
35. What do you like about spring?
I don’t like Spring.
36. How many states have you lived in?
Two, kinda.
37. What states have you lived in?
Alabama, Michigan
38. Do you prefer shoes, socks, or bare feet?
bare feet, if possible
39. Are you a social person?
I try to be.
40. What was the last thing you ate?
Crackers and cottage cheese.
41. Have you tried escargot?
Nope.
42. What is your favorite ice cream?
A particular brand (that I can’t remember) that has a type called “Caramel Coyote” that I can’t find anymore.
43. What is your favorite dessert?
Tiramasu, right off the top of my head.
44. Have you drank a Shirley Temple
Nope.
45. What kind of jelly do you like on your PB & J sandwich?
Peach.
46. Do you like Chinese food?
Sure do.
47. Do you like coffee?
If it’s frothy and filled with sugar and milk, yeah.
48. How many glasses of water, a day, do you drink on average?
Probably about two, honestly.
49. What do you drink in the morning?
Water or tea if I have the time.
50. How often do you shower?
Every 36 hours, at least.
51. Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed?
A certain side.
52. Do you know how to play poker?
Yep.

For years, our main gaming computer (which we call the “Titan”) would just not share with any other computers.

It couldn’t host multiplayer games.

It couldn’t share a printer.

It wouldn’t share files.

You couldn’t access multimedia of any sort over it.

I had absolutely no idea what the problem was — it was a very old Windows XP installation, probably four years or more, and had gone through Windows XP SP1, SP2, and SP3, so there’s no telling.

It might’ve been some service I turned off years ago, or (more than likely) an old remnant  of Norton Antivirus (a horrible, horrible program) that refused to let go.

I noticed that my much newer gaming PC would work just fine, and that it was running the exact same services that the Titan was running, so I was stumped.  You couldn’t even ping the Titan if you wanted to.

So, on a whim, I search for “cannot ping Windows XP computer” on Google, and found this:

Try this to reset TCP/IP in XP:

Click Start -> Run -> CMD

At the prompt type:

NETSH INT IP RESET C:IPRESET.TXT

via Help! Unable to ping machine on the network – Windows NT / 2000 / XP / 2003.

And it worked.  I don’t know what it did, but it worked.  I think it reset completely the way that TCP/IP worked on Windows, because when the Titan restarted, my IP settings were completely reset, but I could ping it. And it shared files.  And it could host games (I think).

Either way, I’m happy!

Installing GIMP 2.6 on Ubuntu 8.04

Well, I got tired of being stuck with the version 2.4 of the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) that ships with Ubuntu 8.04.  It’s old, it uses the old window system that I can’t stand anymore, and version 2.6 (the current version) fixes tons of more issues that it has.

However, you can’t just go to your package manager and add it — Ubuntu locks program versions when it ships (for example, the latest version of GIMP available to Ubuntu 8.04 users is 2.4).  This is done for compatibility reasons — if version 2.4 of the GIMP works fine when Ubuntu 8.04 ships, then they lock those versions together. That way, it’s always guaranteed to work, no matter when Ubuntu is installed in the future.

However, there’re sites likes GetDeb.net which lets developers upload installer files of popular programs for Ubuntu, so that users of older versions of Ubuntu can install new programs.

So, I went to the GetDeb page for GIMP 2.6 and downloaded all the files you need to install GIMP 2.6 on Ubuntu 8.04:

• libgegl-0.0-0
• libbabl-0.0-0
• gimp-data
• libgimp2.0
• gimp

Usually, in 99% of situations, you just download these files and install them, even on Ubuntu. However, on Ubuntu 8.04 with GIMP 2.6, there’s a bit of a problem — you have to force these files to install.

Now, you can do fancy command-line kung-fu if you want to, but you shouldn’t have to on Ubuntu, so I’ve included a file here for you:

• gimp-2.6-install-ubuntu-8.04

Just save that file, put it along with the 5 files you downloaded from GetDeb.net into their own folder, and then run that file. (Make it executable in its properties, and then double-click on it).

And that’s it!

(I got the inspiration for that install file from this blog post here!)

The Synergy of Mac, Linux, and Windows

I’ve always heard about the program called Synergy, but I’ve never used it, and that’s a damn shame.

Have a lot of computers side by side that you manage all at once? Tired of going from one keyboard and mouse, to another, even though the computers you’re working with are side by side?

Then download Synergy, configure it, and run it on all of your computers (Mac, Linux, and Windows).

And that’s it. Honestly. It’ll take you about 20 minutes and you’ll spend the next few hours wondering how you ever lived without it.

It treats all of your computers like one giant desktop — just move your mouse “off” of the side of your monitor towards your other computer, and your mouse will instantly reappear on that computer’s monitor. If you need to type something, you type it with the first computer’s monitor. Seriously.

Ah, a caveat — on Mac and Linux, the setup isn’t as streamlined and easy as it is on Linux, so there’s a program called QuickSynergy that can do it for you. If you’re using Ubuntu, it’s already in the repositories — just go to your “Add/Remove Applications” menu item, and install QuickSynergy from there.

Would you buy a cell phone if it was really, really, really cool, and could help organize your life, and had web connectivity and GPS and all sorts of other neat stuff, but couldn’t make calls inside your house because of service problems?

Oh — you wouldn’t? Well, screw you, no one cares what you think anyway!

Well, I did it — I went and bought a G1. If you don’t know what a G1 is, it’s Google’s first foray in to the world of cellular telephones — a cell phone, made by a company called HTC, running Google’s Android mobile phone operating system.

It really is a great phone — more like a tiny computer. It links up and syncs completely with your Google account (a great boon for disorganized people like myself — now my cell phone, which is with me always, can remind me of things I set on my computer, which is not with me always).

It has built-in WIFI access, built-in GPS, and to top it all off, the entire thing is running on top of a Linux installation (that you can hack the shit out of if you want to).

That being said, there are certain… issues with the G1.

Number one:  the battery life, or lack thereof. And this isn’t just the usual “Oh, my battery doesn’t last for 15 days, therefore it stinks.” No, no, no. I can fully charge my G1, let it sit there, maybe browse the net a few times, poke around here and there, and 22 hours later it’s dead. And this isn’t even with me even really doing anything on the phone. I’m just practically letting it sit there.

In converse, Nina can sit there with her Blackberry Curve browsing the net, sending SMS, Twittering, and her battery lasts for about three days.

Of course — I can live with that. It’s a powerful device — it needs a lot of power. It’s like a small computer, like I said — if I had a laptop with a battery that lasted for 22 hours, I’d be really happy!

However, here’s the practical dealbreaker — the G1 has no UMA. What’s that, you may ask? It’s a technology that allows (modern) cell phones to make calls over your home’s WIFI internet, using your regular cell phone minutes — it’s kinda of like having a super-strong cell phone tower in your house, with unlimited reception.

Never a dropped call, crystal clear connection — it’s amazing.

More importantly, if you live in an area with poor cell phone reception (say, you can receive calls outside your house but not inside, or you’re roaming inside your house, or whatever), UMA pretty much fixes that.  And it’s seamless, too — you can make a call inside your house, go outside, and it doesn’t get dropped, and vice-versa.

The G1 not having this, in the area where we live, makes it almost useless inside our home (where I’m spending most of our time if I’m not at work, and thus too busy to use my phone).

Sigh.

(Still deciding what to do about this.)

Some things I’ve learned lately. I try to keep learning all the time, whether I’m making an active effort of it or not:

1) When you’re under your car doing an oil change, and you push up on your driveshaft just for fun, and it flexes upwards a few inches, no, this is not normal behavior. You need to get it fixed.

2) The distributor cap and rotor on your car are not hard to change. Do it now.

3) Sadly enough, sometimes Windows XP works better on laptops than Ubuntu, if the laptop is more than four or five years old.

4) The people working at Autozone don’t know jack shit about cars 90% of the time. Don’t insult them, just prepare yourself to talk to someone who doesn’t know the difference between a greaseable u-joint and a non-greaseable u-joint (even though the names are pretty self-explanatory).

5) Consolidating your loans is pretty easy, as long as you remember your government pin-number (that you haven’t used for years).

6) Whenever you get a new cell phone plan, even on contract, you have a federally-mandated 14-day “buyer’s remorse” period in which you can return your cell phone and cancel the contract without any repercussions. Don’t listen to the salesperson if they say “no, you don’t” — oftentimes, like the Autozone employees mentioned up above, they don’t know a damn thing.

7) Make sure the spare tire in your car is properly inflated, or else you may find yourself changing a flat tire one day that your car has developed, only to find the spare you just pulled out of your trunk is flat as well.

…and that’s about it for now.

I’ve just spend something like seven hours over the past two days adding ID3 tags to all of my old MP3′s.

In case you didn’t know, ID3 tags are little bits of information that are encoded along with your MP3′s that tell your MP3 player of choice (be it Apple, Sandisk, Zune — yeah, right, a “Zune”, HURR) what the current song’s title, artist, album, etc. are.

Neat, ain’t it? Yeah, it just doesn’t know it by magic.

Now, unfortunately, depending upon how you get your MP3′s, this information is not always included along with the files. (Say, for instance, you ripped your own MP3′s from your private CD collection.) Some CD rippers are thoughtful, and ask you to include artist and album information (though this is still a pain in the ass to fill out, since you have to do every song separately). Some programs (oddly enough, ones you usually don’t pay for) are smart enough to go online to several big open-source CD information sites, check the track lengths on the CD you’re trying to rip, and then figure out what CD it is, filling in the ID3 information for you!

Yeah, that’s if you’re lucky. However, if you’re like a lot of people, you have a massive collection of old MP3′s — most of which you have no idea where they’re from — and none of them have appropriate artist/album/track information. Most of them will have correct file names, but that doesn’t mean crap when you put them on your iPod or whatever. They’ll just show up as a bunch of “Unknown — Unknown Artist — Unknown Album” tracks.

Well, half of all my MP3′s were like this, and it was pretty pathetic.  I’ve always had the intention to fix them all, but it’s a big, big job to take on, and every time I started I put it off.

So, yesterday, I sat down, and I was all like, “I’m going to do this.”  About seven hours later I was done.

What helped me do it?  A little program called EasyTag, available free from your favorite Linux repository. Not the most beautiful program in the world (especially on my small laptop screen, as Easy Tag is obviously to be used with three columns of information), but it works!

A little word to the wise, if you’re planning on doing this yourself, to your own MP3 collection — EasyTag doesn’t edit files directly and right away. You have your big list of files there in the middle column, and you edit their ID3 tag information on the right. You can do a bunch of files like this, and then when you’re finally ready for your changes to be applied, then you click on the little “Save” icon (which will forever be a bloody floppy disk, now and until the end of time, even if no one uses them anymore). Only then are your changes applied to your MP3 files.

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Spent a lot of time here, between the years of 1998-2000. Shutdown when the city increased the rent to the point where the proprietor could no longer operate.

…that really sucked.

I’m usually a very upbeat person — most stuff doesn’t get me down, no matter how bad it is.  I always try to look for a good side.

However, when I have a day when just everything goes wrong, and then everything I do to make it better goes wrong, sometimes even I feel like just giving up.

Well, I did just that, however then my installation of Ubuntu 8.10 wouldn’t correctly step the processor up/down (because it had been configured with a Celeron, which doesn’t support those things).

Well, as I found out (somewhere on the Ubuntu forums), all you have to do is add “p4_clockmod” to your running modules (edit the file “/etc/modules” and place it at the end) and then restart.

Simple as pie. I’m quite surprised at the amount of speed switching this processor does — I’ve seen it step from 2.6 GHz to 2.2 GHz all the way down to 600 and 300 MHz. Amazing, and great for energy use and cooling, too.