Wayne D's Blog

Thanks to a post by Don M. on the System rescue CD messages board I managed to get X windows to start on a Dell laptop with an ATI mobile chipset. I wanted to use the system rescue CD v0.4.2 to shrink the Windows partition so we could install Linux on the machine. The trick is to enter rescuecd doxdetect forcevesa at the boot prompt. That's not the end of the story though, neither Centos 5 or Fedora Core 8 would install. They could see but not use the nice 10GB free space we created at the end of the drive and gave a message about not being able to find enough free space to create the necessary partitions. Ubuntu 7.10 didn't have any problems though and now resides happily on the laptop. The wireless even worked right out of the box too.

After updating Firefox to 1.5.0.12 I have been experiencing occasional unexplained crashes. Firefox crashes when it tries to open a new window and it's starting to get on my nerves. For the record I am running Centos 5. I just lost my first blog post since I switched away from Yahoo 360 when I tried to add a link to a post that I will now have to rewrite. Maybe tomorrow. I should have used Seamonkey.

I was sitting on the couch writing this post on the EEEPC while listening to Po' Girl signing So Lazy on DNTO and thinking about how appropriate it was when the wifi went out. I was on the couch because it's nice and sunny in the family room and it was cold and dark downstairs because it's a basement.

Last week the garbage guys didn't take our cardboard boxes. We think it's because they were flattened and placed in another cardboard box but not tied with string. Sometimes I pine for the good old days when you put out 10 bags of garbage and it disappeared. Now my kitchen looks like a transfer station, boxes, cans, newspapers, organics, plastics all separated. It's worse because it's winter and the garage is full of cars. I expect that I'll end up building some sort of garbage and recycling management system in there this summer. This is probably a bit sacraligious to be saying on the day when we are doing Earth hour. Earth hour, what a crock, hold it on a Saturday in the evening, at least for me. Turn off the lights for an hour? Pleeeeassssee, let's do something significant, like actually try to reduce greenhouse gases. Spend the time writing an email to your MP telling them that the government needs to set some hard reduction targets and achieve them. Replace the incandescent bulbs in your house with higher efficiency bulbs or turn out half the bulbs in your house. Stop driving your minivan or SUV when there is only one person in the vehicle. Turn down your thermostat and put on a sweater. Do something meaningful and not symbolic. That's it for now.

Between work, getting www.myyahoolive.com up and helping Zack get his blog going I have been too busy to write my own blog. I also have been trying to figure out why Firefox on Linux is crashing whenever I try to download something. I've switched to seamonkey for downloading temporarily.

Now that I have the My Yahoo Live up and running the hard part has began, trying to let people know about the site. I am too timid to drop into Yahoo Live rooms and spam them withe the information, besides I'm not sure that I could drag the shirtless Brazilian guys away from the single minded goal of hitting on the women who broadcast on Yahoo Live. I've submitted the site to the Yahoo applications gallery but haven't heard anything from them yet. Well worst case is that I polished up my MySQL and php skills and I'm out the $7.50 for the domain name. Of course if Microsoft buys Yahoo they may kill of Yahoo Live or at least close down the API.

I did manage to get the Philips webcam saving video at 60. The main problem seems to be that the VLounge software only saves in .mpg format and that only works at 30 fps. The key was finding a modified version of amcap so I didn't have to download the whole Microsoft Platform SDK.

For the last couple of years I have attended the CBC's Easter sunrise concert. It looks like CBC's recent realignment of CBC Radio 2 means that the concert will no longer take place, though I didn't find any mention of it being canceled on their website. My church dropped the Easter sunrise service a number of years ago so now it seems like I'll have to sleep in on Easter morning.

I recently signed up for Twitter and decided I wanted a desktop widgit for my Linux PC running Centos 5. Nothing in the repository, so I got the source code for a couple of the most recommended Linx Twitter client. None of them would configure. My version if Glib was too low or some other dependency couldn't be resolved. There are reasons I run Centos 5 instead of Fedora or Ubuntu but Linux ix never going to take over the world if there continues to be more than 10 flavours each of which have their own special kinks. Microsoft took a lot of grief over the multiple versions of Vista they released but they have nothing on Linux. Many of the Twitter clients I looked at also had Widows versions available that probably worked without incident.

I also recently bought a Philips SPC900NC webcam. Even though it advertises 60 and 90 fps capture I couldn't get it to work at anything over 30 fps when using the supplied Windows software and drivers even after updating them to the latest versions. I also sent an email to the maintainer of the Linux driver offering to implement the higher frame rates if he had any technical information. No response was forthcoming.

Somedays I really hate computers.