Monthly Archives: July 2011

Woodchucks Hard Cider, Summer Brew

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Sorry for the relatively crappy picture; I don’t have a good background to deal with.

Anyway, let me present Woodchuck’s Summer Brew.  It’s a hard cider, light in color, and sweet, almost like a sweet and light summer wine.  It comes in the multi-pack that has 12 bottles, 4 vareties.  It’s 5% ABV, and is quite refreshing on a hot day, like today.

It pours out slightly fizzy into your standard beer glass, with no head at all.  The first taste is sweet and fresh, and reminds you of fresh-picked apples.  I think there are a variety of apples used in this cider.  It has a very smooth and drinkable taste, and has a very nice, slightly tart finish.

This is delicious.  Get the Woodchuck’s 12-pack and give this a try.  They’re addicting and so easy to drink!

Sixgun Productions: Fab on Google+

Some people have asked me to write down my thoughts on Google+ and explain why my post ratio on identi.ca has dropped off a cliff lately, so with this post I’m trying to make sense of what I think happened, for the benefit of everyone. Keep in mind that this is purely my personal view and largely born out of the simple fact that, unlike other people, I can only really deal with one social network in my life — I rather use one service a lot than split my posts up between two or three of them, I guess that’s just the way my particular brain works.

As most people will probably be aware, I have been extremely active on several microblogging and social networking  services for years now. I started on Jaiku after Leo Laporte had mentioned that service on one of his shows and that is also where I first met Dan. Linux Outlaws was basically born on Jaiku and we picked up many fans there; I used to love that site. Then Jaiku was bought by Google which basically sealed its fate and it was killed by neglect. The site was still awesome and the community held together for a while, but in the fast moving world of the web, not improving anything about the service for over a year basically killed it. I played around with Twitter a bit but somehow neither the site itself nor the community ever fully grabbed me. In fact I still feel that there is no community on Twitter at all, it seems more like a load of people just pushing out posts and shouting at each other to me. With Facebook it was even worse, the whole thing started to actively annoy me very fast to a point where I actually closed down my account because I couldn’t stand it anymore; what I want most out of a social network is intelligent and funny conversations and instead of that, Facebook constantly bombarded me with inane games, quizzes and lots of bullshit. As neither Twitter nor Facebook was doing it for me, it is no wonder that I jumped on identi.ca the moment the site opened to the public (and I mean that quite literally, as I am user #418 on the site). For the past three years, I have lived and breathed identi.ca and I loved every minute of it — I’m still the human with the most posts on that site ever. Linux Outlaws went from a mediocre podcast to one of the biggest in its field with the help of identi.ca and it’s community and we made many good friends on there. I’ve stayed at the houses of people I had only ever met through the service, in other countries, too. That is pretty amazing, if you think about it. So as you can clearly see, I still love identi.ca and the people in its community very much. So what happened? Why have I spend the last few weeks almost exclusively on Google+?
via sixgun.org

Fab on Google+.

A very interesting read. I think Google+ is a great thing (and could possibly take over Facebook) BUT, I still prefer status.net for my daily communication. Twitter is also loads of fun; I have met many people on twitter, and I don’t think I could leave.

Do read this and feel free to comment on the G+ thread linked at the bottom; I already have. I hope Fab stays on identi.ca.

We’ll see what happens with Google+. I like the federation with statusnet. Google+ seems very centralized, like Facebook, but that’s just me.

Spotify

So, I booted into Windows7 yesterday to install TF2, and since I have the free Spotify account, I decided to evaluate it.

Holy damn.

This service is awesome.  I set up a playlist of all Classic Hollywood songs (Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, etc) and I love it.

I’m “this close” to buying 3 months of premium so I can evaluate it in Ubuntu.  I’d really prefer an unlimited account since I don’t have a mobile phone that plays Spotify.

It’s better than Pandora because I can search for what I want and get exactly what I want in the playlist.  For instance, on Pandora, I search for “Gene Kelly” and it plays everything but Gene Kelly.  I’d like some of his music mixed in with the Bing, Dino, and The Voice, please.

We’ll see.  I might get myself a gift sub to it.  I’m not keen on having a recurring subscription right now.

nVidia is Trying to Kill Me

So.

Yeah.

nVidia is trying to make me die from crazy antics to make it work.

I reinstalled.  I was still having an xorg-being-eaten issue, so I started fiddling with the settings (again) and did the following:

  • Turned off “Sync to VBlank” (In the OpenGL Settings)
  • Turned off “Allow Flipping” (In the OpenGL Settings)
  • Change the “Image Settings” to “Performance”… the slider will be about 2 notches down from the last “Quality” (In the OpenGL Settings)
  • Turn off “Sync to VBlank” in the X Server XVideo Settings
  • Make sure the PowerMizer settings are on “Adaptive”

Now, I think part of my heat issue is the fact that it’s insanely hot here (90F) and our A/C is barely keeping up with removing the humidity from the air.  But, with these changes, I’m running Unity with no problems, and my system performance applet (SysPeek) is not bouncing up to the “red zone”.  This is good.

So, I’m not running my preferred dual-head setup, but that’s ok, because my actual monitor space is decent (1680×1050).  Also, I feel more focused on what I’m working on with the one screen.  Oh, and I still have 4 workspaces, so it’s easy to separate my tasks out (browsing and writing on #1, microblogging/chat/irc on #2, and audio/video on #3.  Number four is my free workspace.).

I’m sticking with this setup.  I’ve finally got it working, with minimal visual degradation to my games (mainly SuperTuxCart).  Also, I have increased desk space due to not having a second monitor.

I’m so looking forward to Oneiric and hopefully this issue with nVidia will be fixed.  2012 will be bringing Wayland, and I’m not relishing the changeover and the problems that will surely ensue.

I Got a Free Spotify Account!!!

But I can’t use it.

Unless I’m willing to use Wine (I don’t want that cruft on my machine) and I can’t use the native Linux application.

I started it up today and got this error: “Use of this device is not enabled for your account”.

Exactly what the everloving fuck does that mean?  Well, it means that you have to buy a subscription to the service before you can use it.  It means I have to fork over money before I can figure out if this will have the music I want to listen to.  It means I have to buy something sight unseen (or rather, unheard) so I can test it out.

There are a bunch of Linux users on Get Satisfaction here that are expressing their frustration and downright anger that they can’t use something without paying for it.  Yes, yes, you can argue that you need to pay for the program and the service, but they offer a free tier that is supported by ads.  This is fine and I’d use it, but I want something that’s native to my desktop.

There are plenty of good programs and services that are worth paying for; I just want to test out Spotify before I pay for it… I want to see if it’ll work for my needs.

In the meantime, you can find me on Pandora and Last.fm.

Ubuntu 11.10 Says Goodbye to the ‘Me Menu’ | OMG! Ubuntu!

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via omgubuntu.co.uk

Please read the article at OMG!Ubuntu linked under the picture for details.

This is a great idea; it condenses down the top bar, and makes it easier to log into chat.

I also second getting rid of the “post to” section. Partly because I never saw a reason for it. I mean, I go right to gwibber and type my message there. Having too many places to type messages is confusing for users.

I don’t use it to set IM status, but it makes sense to set status from the messaging menu rather than the me menu.  I might actually use this to set status; I can see how it’d be handy when empathy is on a differnet desktop.

I also like the idea of hiding it. Some people don’t want the envelope there because it doesn’t fit with their workflow; they should be able to hide it without having to completely remove the message menu via the package manager.

More nVidia Fiddling

All right.

So, I’m sure everyone who reads this blog (or at least the ones I haven’t scared off yet) know I’ve been having issues with my nVidia drivers.  I was using the nouveau drivers, which is fine, but they have a bad “blocking” effect with embedded flash videos.  Also, I didn’t think I was getting full 3D acceleration.

When I ran the nVidia drivers, Xorg would peg my CPU between 10 minutes and 3 hours.  “top” would show xorg taking up all of my CPU; compiz wasn’t far behind.

I don’t understand why this is happening, but I just know that it is happening.

So, I was doing some searching on the Ubuntu Forums (which is hit-or-miss regarding issues) and found this thread.

I tried the commands in comment #19:

sudo apt-get remove –purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
sudo nvidia-settings

I saved the xorg, rebooted, added my external monitor, and configured it (along with the gamma).

I seem to have a working setup right now…  Let’s hope it holds for awhile.

Podcast Review: Linux Outlaws

Linuxoutlaws

I’ve saved this one for awhile because I haven’t listened in awhile (oops) but I finally hit the live show today.  The best way to listen to Linux Outlaws is live, if you can.

Firstly, on getting the live show:

Be online on Mondays at about 2pm ET, and point your browser to Ustream here.  To get on irc, grab Xchat (or another irc program) and get in the chatroom at irc.freenode.org, room #sixgun.  Just chill and wait and see what’s happening, and enter into the conversation whenever you feel like it.  (For those not in the know, IRC is a way to chat with people online; I should probably write a little blog post about it.)  You can see some more information about listening live here at the live page for Sixgun.

If you can’t be online, grab the podcast.  It’s here, on feedburner.

I try to listen to all of the episodes.  I say try, but I usually fail; Dan and Fab put out a podcast a week (except during the World Cup, hah), sometimes two.  Like last week, they put out the Jaffa Cakes episode and a special about Bitcoins.  I still have to listen to both.

The podcast covers the linux world.  News, distro reviews (Dan did a great review of Ubuntu 11.04), distro releases, Microsoft and Apple bashing, and Beer of the Week.

I love the banter and (sometimes) arguments that come out of this show.

Fab is a Fedora fanatic, and Dan switches distros often, so there’s plenty of new linux information.

This podcast is good for people who’ve been using linux for a little while, but if you’re a newbie, I wouldn’t discourage you from listening to it.  There are plenty of great information and podcasts out there; this is just one of them.  Ubuntu UK Podcast and MintCast are also (supposed to be) great.  I listen to Ubuntu UK, but not MintCast as I’m currently being consumed by podcasts and can’t keep up with them.

Anyway, this is definitely a 5/5 star podcast.  I can’t remember if I’ve applied star ratings to these in the past, but I’m going to here.  It’s worth your time and effort to listen/watch live, as the IRC chat is amazing fun.