George’s Wonder Blog

I just *had* to post where you can find this video. I heard about it last night on the news because of the impending release of the Tom Cruise (unauthorized) biography by Andrew Norton. Evidently this The Tom Cruise Scientology indoctrination video was put on YouTube (as a publicity stunt??) but the Church of Scientology rather quickly had the video removed. Its kind of shocking to me, its a side of Tom Cruise I wasn’t very aware of.

Bravely enough WordPress.com has the video ‘disembedded’. You can see the Tom Cruise Scientology video (until the Chruch of Scientology sues and gets it removed ??) from the WordPress site, just scroll down a bit and you’ll see it under the first paragraph:

Tom Cruise Scientology video
Transcript of Tom Cruise Scientology video

FLASH INSTALLED

Finally! I found a working HOWTO for installing Adbobe/Macromedia Flash 9 for Linux, and more specifically Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). First, open your favorite console. Next, visit this Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) How-To page. Once you get to the instructions (below) its a simple matter of copy/pasting 4 lines of commands, or if your console doesn’t support paste, typing them in by hand (not so fun):

• direct link: http://www.funnestra.org/ubuntu/gutsy/#flashplayer
• OR scroll down to the Useful Packages section, and click “Adobe Flash”

Either way, ignore the instructions 1 & 2 at the top since they do not work at this point due to a bug. Follow the instructions below that start 1. Manually download and… to get Flash installed and running.

PRINTER INSTALLED
I installed an Epson Stylus Photo 820, and it worked right off, not counting that I need new ink cartridges. The physical install was the easiest, power plug and parallel cord. Next, System > Administration > Printing, then click New Printer. It did a quick search returning several options of which I chose LPT:1. Going from memory now, the next choice was the brand of printer, Epson. After that I was presented with a list of Epson printers and selected the Epson Stylus Photo 820 from the list and finished.

Next was the part I’m having trouble with, ink. The ink cartridges are old and dry and the printer was given to me with a refill kit. The refill wasn’t too difficult after I figured the was ink for black, blue, light blue, red, light red and yellow. The blues and reds looked alike butthe light-colors were marked with a capital “L” on top. After refilling, including many ink spills on my hand its done, but not printing very well. I’ll give it some more time before I give up an attempt to buy new ink cartridges.

THIS IS NOT
This is not an article about drive mirroring, which I will have to save for some future date. Drive mirroring is more important for a) those with the know-how and b) those who really need a more bullet-proof option than hard drive backups.

This is also not a step-by-step HOWTO written by someone who has actually done this - I just know its important and I’ll get around to it….. someday. Soon hopefully.

THIS IS
A wake up call for those of you who may not have thought of backing up your hard drive or a reminder for those of you who have forgotten, along with some tips.

WHAT IS BACK UP VS MIRRORING?
Imagine mirroring as a copy of your entire hard drive - all of your installed programs, data files, everything. Back up of your hard drive backs up specific data, but not programs. Sure you can backup C:/Program Files, but if you ever have to restore from your backup many/most of your programs will not work because you have not backed up other essential parts of the program such as Windows Registry entires.

BACKING UP YOUR HARD DRIVE
I subscribe to the Lifehacker RSS feed and found a real jewel - back up your hard drive. This is probably more important than most people realize, especially for those who rely on certain data and files on our computers. In my case my hard drive has countless files in My Documents, like many Windows users, plus I also have upwards of 175 websites. You can read Lifehacker.com’s Geek To Live: Automatically back up your hard drive for more nitty gritty details than I will mention here. My comments on the Lifehacker article:

• SyncBack freeware is now SyncBack Freeware V3.2.14, scroll down the page past the paid versions
• External Drives - A quick comparison of 320GB External USB Drives VS 320GB External Firewire/USB tonight on Tigerdirect.com (my friend swears by them). Anyway the USB drive was only about $20 less than the USB/Firewire, so if you have the money go for the US/Firewire combo.
• FTP Back up - if you need to or have to start out backing up to your external hard drive and add FTP back up when and if you can. Running back up only mean if your original drive gets fried, your data is safe, but if your house burns down your goose is cooked.

Recently I powered on my Linux machine to show it off to my Dad, and the drivers weren’t playing nicely. For some reason the screen looked exactly the same as when I was using the Nvidia Drivers (see My Linux Journal Day 2 for more), and it booted into an 800×600 screen. Lucky for me simply turning it off and then back on later in the day somehow fixed the issue. So, if you change your video drivers and decide to change back, and find later that your monitor has reverted to the undesirable state, try powering off and back on and maybe you’ll get lucky, too.

I set up Pidgin today, very nice program (Applications > Internet > Pidgin Instant Messenger). It came pre-installed with Ubuntu 7.10, and was very easy to setup and begin running. Pidgin supports AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, and Yahoo IM accounts among others. Plus simply right-clicking it on the menu, and selecting “Add this to launcher panel” put it right up on top of my launcher panel at the top of my screen. Next, a right-click on each item on the launcher panel allowed me to unlock it from the panel (click the “Lock to Panel” menu item to toggle on and off). Then some simple dragging and dropping to re-order my launcher panel and voila!

It was time to look for new wallpaper for my desktop, but this time I had a new idea - a wallpaper for each monitor! Since my friend had already told me about the Google Pack (Google Pack requires Windows XP or Vista. Here is Mac Version) I already have the dual monitor Google Photos Screensaver. Now it was time for dual monitor wallpaper!

The first site I found was http://www.csbmb.princeton.edu/~smcclure/dualmonitor.html posted by S. McClure of Princeton University, and as a nice added touch they are completely free. As a bonus since the page is on princeton.edu I felt 100% safe.

My Google Search for dual monitor wallpapers was fruitful as well, and not surprisingly some of the pages there also had some of S. McClure’s dual monitor wallpapers, I will assume with permission.

This is great! No longer am I stuck with 2 monitors displaying the same exact wallpaper, now it simply stretches across both monitors.

TIPS TO GETTING YOUR DUAL WALLPAPERS ‘WORKING’

1. In Windows XP, and I assume other operating systems and Windows verisons, you have to set the wallpaper to ’tile’, otherwise it may not appear correctly.

2. You may have to re-size the wallpapers, especially if you have 2 different sized monitors.

3. There are lots of wallpapers, so look for nice, hi-res shots that are already wide, VS those that are merely smaller versions stretched out. I saw some of the latter and they weren’t very attractive stretched across all of that monitor real estate.

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, Day 2

Today I tried setting Visual Effects from none to normal to see some cool visual effects (System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects tab). I was disappointed when it didn’t work due to my system specs (the 2nd paragraph on the Upgrading from 7.04 to 7.10 post mentions some) but I was pleased when I realized Linux was getting more out of my NEC Multisync 70 monitor than:

• Windows with the Nvidia driver or…
• Linux with the Nvidia Legacy drivers

The max screen resolution using the Nvidia drivers was 800×600. But Linux, without the Nvidia drivers, runs the monitor at 1280×1024, the maximum resolution recommended by the manufacturer!

I also decided to subscribe to an RSS feed, so for expediency I used Mozilla Thunderbird which is already installed. I googled for a ubuntu tips and ended up choosing http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ as my first RSS.

I heard this one from my daughter.

What do you get when a snowman bites you?

Frost bite.

I’m a novice Linux user, although I’ve used Linux on and off for about 10 years. Most of that 10 years has been OFF without Linux, so each time I start over I have to learn everything all over again.

The history with my Linux machine… where to start? Its an HP Pavilion 8766c (an old PC with a 900MHz P3, and 128 to 256 512MB RAM). It has had about 5 different distros of Linux on it during the past several years. Right now its running Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) but I’ve been getting error messages while updating packages recently. A couple of months ago the Linksys EtherPCI LAN Card II network card died on me.

Well recently I installed a Network Everywhere NC100U-WM network card ($15 at Wal-mart) and it got right back online with no configuration! I was pleasantly surprised, and ready to do some updates. Naturally I got some error messages. that’s when I saw the “Upgrade” button to upgrade to 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). The upgrade attempt was riddled with error messages so I decided to “wipe the system clean”. Last time I tried installing Ubuntu on Ubuntu it didn’t work for me. So I decided to install another distro (temporarily) and then re-install 7.04 fresh right back on top of it all, giving me a clean, “factory fresh” install.

After my re-install of 7.04 I did an update, about 266 updates to be exact, and I had no error messages. Great start! Next I clicked that “Update” button again and the system has now successfully been upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibson).

Now I have to get ready to install all of the items I need (Adobe Flashplayer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc…) and other software packages later.

Its no surprise that Apple’s iPhone is garnering so much media attention, but guess what? Big web sites are standing up and taking notice, too! It turns you can optimize your web site for display on the iPhone.

The big Apple themselves have posted a list of the Top-10 iPhone Optimized Websites, and guess what? If you have a WordPress blog (v2.2 or 2.3 as of this writing) optimizing your site for the iPhone is only a plugin away! Just get the iPhone Viewport Meta plugin.

Throughout the 1990’s Linux evolved into, been packaged into, a desktop Operating System, and into the new millennium its become more and more user-friendly. At some point it became an operating system no longer relegated to just us “computer geeks”, it became a viable alternative desktop operating system for the masses.

More recently Linux has gotten cool. How you ask? Big business has had an eye on Linux for years now, and more recently realized if it was ignored it could become a competitor in one way or another. In 2001 Unix-based Mac OS X (okay that’s not Linux, but its close enough) hit the market in new Macintosh computers. According to Wikipedia.org, Apple has also customized versions of its Unix-based OS X in Apple TV, iPhone and the iPod touch.

More recently computer maker HP introduced its first laptop with Linux, and since has also begun offering Linux Servers. HP has even done some custom deals with Linux Desktops, and may offer factory installed Linux Desktops down the road (well of course, right?).

What’s next, Microsoft and Linux? Yup. Just this year Microsoft partnered with Novell (makers of Suse Linux). Microsoft and Linux? Maybe the next version of Windows will be called Windows TUX, who knows?

So how cool is Linux? Well, including Unix-based OS X you’ve got installations in Macintosh Desktops, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch, plus computer maker HP and Microsoft also jumping on board the “Linux train”. Oh yes and lets not forget the server this blog runs on is a Linux server! Cool, eh?

UPDATE: 1/17/2008 - A Step Closer to Linux

I just found out today that Max OS X is, in part, based on Darwin/Rhapsody/OPENSTEP which are open source versions of Unix, some developed by Apple, Inc.