Insanity Takes Many Forms

I really hope I’m dreaming. It’s 3 am, I’m stuck on physics homework, and I could swear that someone is blasting harmonica music outside. There is a somewhat surreal element to the whole situation. o_O

Why Ubuntu Died

So, almost directly after I experienced my problem with Ubuntu and switched to Arch Linux, someone else came to me with the exact same problem that caused me to jump distros.

What is this problem, you ask? Well, if you are using GDM, the screen will blink several times, GDM will crash, and the system will eventually freeze.If you are using KDM, anyone who logs in will be immediately logged back out.

The solution came when I realized that the X server errors were,  in fact, being logged. They were getting dumped as a dot-file in the user’s home directory. It was something like “.xsession-errors”. Anyway, there were two lines in the file, and one of them complained about lnusertemp.

‘Twas then that I realized I’d seen a similar error while installing Arch Linux. A kernel update or something had set the wrong permissions on /tmp. I had forgotten about it though, because the knowledgeable community had documented the error on the forums, and I found the solution quickly.

So, if you are having a problem similar to what I described, today is your lucky day! Simply start in recovery mode from grub and issue the following handy command.

chmod -R 1777 /tmp

As for me? I’m staying with Arch Linux. Ubuntu is nice, but I really appreciate the  more technical-oriented community attached to Arch. The signal to noise ratio is oh-so-much higher. Interestingly enough, the reason I was using Ubuntu was because I liked having a system I didn’t need to care about breaking. I now like Arch because it’s much easier to fix when something inevitably does break.

Return to ArchLinux

So, when an Ubuntu kernel update severely messed up X.org last week, I was trapped with the horrors of Windows XP for a week. Clearly, something had to be done. I didn’t want to reinstall Ubuntu just to be faced with the same annoying X crash, and I do like to be running kernels with the latest security updates applied.

Enter Arch Linux. You can thank this fine fellow for reminding me of it’s existence. Though installation was much longer and painful than Ubuntu, it should be a lot less of a pain to fix if something breaks. Everything seems to be running fairly smoothly, though the interface fonts on Firefox 2 are in like 6 point font for no apparent reason, and sound is either muted or non-existent.  I’ll live; I just needed my coding environment back. I figure that if I have enough time to care about non-school-related details, I’ll have enough time to fix it.

Oh, It’s fast too. Noticeably faster boot, login, and package installation times. I’m pretty happy about pretty much everything associated with the switch.

All except for my 5 gigs of bandwith. *sigh* Alas, one-fifth of my five gigabyte per month bandwith allocation. I knew thee well.

The Moon is a Lie!

This is how I spend so much stupid time not doing homework.

1. I need to do physics homework like a good student
2. It’s online! How handy. Let’s go to Lon-Cappa
3. Hmm. This problem requires that I use the gravitational acceleration constant for the moon. I don’t know that, and it’s not stated in the problem or the book.
4. I know! Wikipedia. Not always 100% reliable, but can be handy for things like this.
5. That’s a really short article. Doesn’t have the number I need. But hey, look! It’s a reference to faked moon landings. Wow!
6. Ok, don’t get distracted. Some other website must have it.
7. Volia! 1.62m/s^2. How easy!
8. Gah! It says the answer was wrong! Stupid site gave me bad info. Good thing I’ve still got four tries left on the problem.
9. Click! I close the tab of the treacherous website. Oh, look. It’s the wikipedia page on faked moon landings.
10. Time passes…
11. Wait, it’s how late? Gah!

Tune in next week, when James SSHes to letnet… and certain doom!

My Firefox Configuration

Upon reinstalling Ubuntu, the first thing I did was pull up a Tomboy note I save useful Firefox settings in. It occurred to me that I had some rather useful tweaks saved, and it would be a shame to hoard them all to myself. So, this is my Firefox configuration of choice. Yay.

Extensions
Adblock Plus
ChatZilla
Fission
Google Gears
Greasemonkey
Stylish
Ubunfox

Theme
Tango Gnome theme

about:config

1. browser.startup.homepage = http://www.google.com
2. browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 32
3. browser.tabs.closeButtons = 0
4. browser.urlbar.hideGoButton = true
5. network.cookie.cookieBehavior = 1
6. browser.backspace_action = 0
7. layout.spellcheckDefault = 2
8. keyword.URL = http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=
9. middlemouse.loadContentURL = false
10. general.autoScroll = true

What it does

1. Set homepage
2. Make minimum tab size smaller
3. Only show a close button on the current tab
4. Hide the GO button on the address bar
5. Only load cookies from the current site
6. Make hitting backspace go back.
7. Enable spellcheck in one-line fields
8. Enable Google searchs in the main address bar
9. Disable middle-clicking on tabs to goto URL in clipboard
10. Middle click to scroll

Thanks to Joey Day for the “Google search in the address bar” tip. I believe he currently uses YubNub.

Stylish CSS
Combine Stop and Reload buttons

Targeted marketing surveys?

Ok, this is somewhat scary.

I didn’t even think about the poll until after I’d clicked an option. Should I be worried that “they” know enough about me purely from information gathered autonomously to ask if I liked a spiritual sequel to KOTOR or a game about parkour better? Both of which titles I eagerly anticipate playing within the next five years? I don’t even think I’m in a gaming group. Well, maybe I am. Crap, I’m in like five of them.

I generate information for humans, not robots. I really wish Facebook had a robots.txt option.

But seriously. I answered the poll. That’s even worse! They have extracted more information from me! Soon they will derive vital information from my preference, like my secret plans to have a finger removed in order to insert an assassination blade. Airport security will start stopping everyone with four fingers and then where will I be? Not en route to stabbing evil Facebook scrubbing bots, that’s where.

In other, tangentially related, information, Nineteen Eighty-Four recently landed on my Christmas reading list. Stuff that in your hat and eat it, robot!

p.s. What happened to the last one percent, I wonder? Dead, most likely. Sad.

Smoke @ 9:30

The microwave next door just started billowing out smoke due to burnt popcorn. Sadly, in the communal rush to close doors and fan smoke out windows, I didn’t think to wrap a shirt around the main west wing smoke alarm before it went off.

*sigh*

My Salad

I had two midterms today. In order to properly prepare one’s body for the harrowing experience, one must obtain three things: study, food, and sleep. I had one of those. Now, lunch is good for the brain and all that, but so is sleep, and I didn’t feel comfortable proceeding henceforth and thereon on six hours. Clearly, something had to be done. I needed to up my sleep stat to seven hours. So, I did.

An hour later, at 11:45, I advanced out of the door. My path was clear. I would approach the fine dining establishment known as The Hive, order an conversion meal, go to the classroom, and eat it before the test started. This is a test that starts at 12:00 sharp, mind you. I know, I’m brilliant that way.  After a three minute jaunt down to this hive of eatables and grease and a five minute wait in line, I had reached the conversion meal. It was a salad. That’s not exactly what I would have chosen, had I had a choice, but time, the universe, and everything had been and were gradually ticking away.

I entered the classroom just in time to receive my scantron sheet. Ok, so no food for now. It’s ok. The classroom is nice and cool, and the salad will be perfectly fine sitting under my chair while I take the test for an hour and a half. Yes.

Midterm number one was completed. I walked to my next class and seized the salad. At last, leafy goodness smothered with with Italian goo would be mine! I smothered it with Italian goo.

“Hey James, do you have your nutritional analysis assignment?”
Wait, what? Um, no, no I did not. I had taken it to the previous three sessions, and the professor had said he would take it the next session each time. Today was the next session.

The weather was clear and hot as I sprinted out of Solheim and vaulted over an unsuspecting hedge. After much drama and sweating and wheezing, I returned to the classroom and passed out on my desk. Just as the professor started passing out scantrons. Aww man.

The poor salad is now sitting in my refrigerator looking rather wilted. I can’t imagine why. It’s only been left at room temperature for like three and a half hours.

Sweet salad, I would have liked to knew thee well.

Cave Story Linux Port

 Just in case you hadn’t heard about it, Cave Story for Linux. Great game. Worked in Wine before, now it works natively with SDL. Wikipedia.

Back at School

Captain’s log: heading 118

Have arrived back at school. Penn 2, though it has lost over half it’s members, continues to rock.

My new roommate, Andy, bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to one of my best friends back home, Danny. Of course, they act absolutely nothing alike.

LetNet Wireless has improved drastically, in part because it now has to play nice with Windows Vista. Last semester, it took me several weeks of tweaking to obtain a connection that was dropped after 30 seconds. Last night, I connected in about 30 seconds with the graphical wireless configuration tool Wicd and Ubuntu Linux 7.04. Then I spent twenty minutes or so trying to get le XP-using RA online. I’d say it’s an improvement.

The Freshmen are interesting. It’s rather strange to be regarded as an alpha male. We walk to Saga or chapel, and they all sort of fall in behind Jr., Tim, and myself. Also, I haven’t really seen much of a few of them. It might have something to do with Jr.’s description of my military experience in Vietnam (?!) and the following conversation:

Cory: So, James, I hear you went to boot camp. How was that?

James: Eh, not so good. Two people died. I killed them. With my thumb.

I can’t imagine why they would be avoiding me.