This is the story of a girl...

I'm not a religious person, I like philosophy but don't believe in most of it, I'm not into supernatural things (but have no problems with people who do) and yet, I regularly read my horoscope. The sad thing is, usually it's right.

Here's mine for the day (or two days, Facebook is lame):

Libra: You're about to get really busy, but at least it will be bunch of fun events you're looking forward to.

This couldn't be more true. Well, "fun" is a relative term I guess. This is the busiest my life has EVER been, but, strangely, I'm enjoying it, and it keeps my mind occupied. Here's a partial list, I'm sure day to day there's random things people ask me to do:

• still work at Autozone on weekends, for now
• starting a new job next week as a marketing designer at a law firm part-time
• full load of 5 classes; Humanities 2, Drawing 2, Design Stories, Eastern Philosophy and:
• Special Aspects in Graphic Design, which is going to be awesome, and also stressful, and demanding. It's basically working with outside clients to develop identities and such, doesn't really have a meeting time but is going to be a lot of work from home.
• running my web design thing, which will pay good once I finish something, but is a lot of work from home
• working at my school every Friday in the IT department

Oh man, this is gonna be one hell of a semester.

- Redd

Linux FTW

So two posts ago I spoke of continuing with Vista and just making it run how I want.

Yeah that thought changed again.

I'm typing this from the comfortable, reasonably easy-to-use and rather excellent Ubuntu KNOME platform. I was at work one day and saw a fellow classmate loading what "looked" like OSX on a Gateway machine, but lo and behold after questioning such an atrocity it turns out she was running Linux Ubuntu with a few hacks.

I pulled out the trusty Seagate external HDD and threw Ubuntu on there, no literally, threw. I got it up and running in about 10 minutes. The only thing was Grub (the boot loader for Linux) h ad been installed onto the external HDD, so the only way to boot Vista from the local HDD was to plug it in so it would read Ubuntu. This was remedied last week when I bit the bullet and partitioned my drive, giving Ubuntu 40gigs of space to steal. So now I have a dual-boot machine: Ubuntu 7.10 and Epic Fail (aka Vista).

The biggest problems I had were making sure all my random Windows programs still worked, aka Adobe CS3, Max's HTML Beauty, WoW (not really), etc etc. The best thing about Linux is WINE, which is a Windows emulator. I could even use this on a sole Linux machine to install and run Windows programs. Chuck Yeagar's Air Combat here I come. Unfortunately, CS3 is not *yet* supported by WINE, but will run CS2 and earlier perfectly. I think I'll wait until WINE gets an update and just run CS3 from the Vista side for now.

There are SO MANY programs for Linux, mostly free and open-source, the way it should be. Firefox comes pre-installed, as well as OpenOffice, which is an excellent alternative to MS Office. I've been running OpenOffice on my Vista and XP machines for a few years. Favorite programs are: WINE (of course), Rhythmboc Music Player (which feels similar to iTunes), KNotes (think Stickies on OSX), Picasa (which is a Google product also available for the PC and Mac, think iPhoto), Pidgin (Trillian or Adium-like but faster and cleaner) and the aforementioned OpenOffice. Another nice app is VMWare, though it's not free. VMWare is basically Parallels for Linux, except not a beta program, and it actually works. I'm having trouble getting it to work with Vista since I have an earlier version but the newest version should work fine. VMWare lets you run a virtual desktop of almost any other OS (except Mac of course) ie: WinXP, 2000, NT, Vista and another Linux install.

So, if you have some free time and want to check out something cool, dust off that old Dell that was running ME 6 years ago and throw Linux on it. It just works, and makes me happy. I didn't have to install any other drivers (except some proprietary graphics drivers, go Intel), the Logitech Wireless Music System works with no extra applications and there's really no need for an anti-virus.

Adam demands this.

Oh and this would be amazing, it better be for AT&T.

Go penguin.

- Redd

do do do, do de do dodo dodedodo doododo

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2008/01/22/drumming-to-super-mario-2/

- Redd

So much for that.

So I had for some reason gotten it into my brain that I should just switch back from Vista to XP Pro. I had good reasoning, Vista is not any faster on this 2gig ram machine then XP was on a 512mg ram machine. So, I figured, put XP on here and it'll be faster.

So I went through and created the bootable disc and backed up all my shit and wrote down the command lines I'd need to run to eject Vista from my machine so XP would be able to format it. Well, XP can't see my disc, and that's ok.

I gave up, I didn't have a very good excuse for switching to XP, plus, I had used Vista to back up all my data, so I wasn't entirely certain it would be able to come back from the dark side.

The good side is now I have all my data backed up for the inevitable crash, I won't have to reinstall all my programs and I went through all the options I never messed with before and now have Vista running kinda maybe sorta how I wanted it.

-- Redd

Music from anywhere!

So I got my new toy in the mail yesterday and OMG, brilliant. I haven't tested the range yet but no real reason to. Installation was simple enough, pop the CD in, install the driver, connect the receiver to the home stereo, plug in the USB Bluetooth thing and once the blue light is on you're connected. There's a remote that comes with it that reminds me of the little iMac remotes, except it's black, and controls volume, mute and can skip to the next song or pause it. It worked great with iTunes and since the remote points to the receiver you don't need to have the computer around at all, it can be hiding away somewhere, which is great for parties where you'd rather not have your laptop out in the open.

The only two complaints I have is that when the receiver is set to variable sound you can't control the volume with the external volume control on the computer, only with the receiver controls or the remote. The other stupid problem is more of a opinion, and thats that the remote is tiny, and you really have to PRESS the buttons since they're soft buttons and not hard.

But, those things are easily overcome and there's many hours of wireless music to be enjoyed soon.

- Redd

The Wireless Crusade

I've been on this wireless crusade lately...

It first started with getting the new laptop. The old laptop (Emachines) had such an old battery that it had to stay plugged in no matter what, so I got used to leaving it on a desk and always having it plugged in. The new one (Toshiba) of course has a new battery, therefore actually being mobile. So I'd have it on my lap while sitting on the couch, being plugged into the broadband modem, the mouse, the speakers on the shelf, etc.

Getting up to do something besides browsing the interweb became a federal project of not getting tangled, thus the crusade began. I bought a cheapie Netgear wireless router from Staples; since the apartments small I don't need too much of a range. For Christmas I ended up getting a wireless mouse and keyboard made by Smartlogic and runs about $25 at of all places BJ's Wholesale.

So that solved most of the wires situation. The only one left was really the external speakers setup, and since I don't use them too often (only for music while cleaning and such) I just dealt with the wire. Till it broke, however. I always have to move the bass box out in order to reach from it to my laptop stand, which is a pain in of itself, and I guess I pulled the wire a little too hard, so now the copper wires are showing and frayed. Awesome.

Answer? this. My friend Chris mentioned it to me, and got my impulse buying gear in action, and on the credit card it went. Here's an awesome picture of it:



So yes, a wireless bluetooth adapter thing for my computer to my speakers, awesome. It will be here on Thursday so expect a full review.

-- Redd