On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

I’ve fallen out of dance/electronica slowly over the years; got a bit tedious but there are still some bits that I like. I go more for the alternative/indie/rock side of things now, but some live electronica (which I do think is different to dance) can be very good and exciting to see live. I’ve broken my YouTube rule to bring you this fine piece of live electronica from Trentemoller with Evil Dub & Moan; which really heats up around 2min 30 in. I appreciate this is not everyone’s taste (I have strange taste) but I think this is just bloody great; a soundscape if there ever was one!

I admit that when it’s come to managing my mobile phones on my computers I really just haven’t bothered until I got my w810i which is a cracking phone. Sure it feels a little chunky for a candy bar phone but it works fantastically. So much so I’m not renewing my contract to get a new free phone and I don’t fancy the w880i much. If I did go for anything else I’d get a K800 (3.2MP Camera + Decent Flash), but I’m not so there you are.

On Windows I never bother with the manufacturer’s software as it’s usually a dog, usually imposes their music cataloguing on you and just generally is not that great. So I’ve managed the memory stick myself. I also used this phone on a Mac but the iTunes support was pretty, meh. (Well it relied in an AppleScript macro.)

Under Linux; different story. It actually works great, after a quick fix… Read the rest of this entry »

Continued from Part 2

Alright this will be short post as it’s stupid o’ clock (2.15am almost) and I am cream crackered (Knackered) so why is this?

Well I successfully managed to get my system up and running with an upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy. No real issues to report really apart from the odd occasion when coming back from Hiberation or Suspend where Wireless no longer worked but that used to be the case in Feisty and it didn’t happen often (considering the wireless works which it didn’t in XP is tribute enough to Ubuntu/Linux.)

Anyway the point is I then backed up my files and wiped the hard disk and installed from scratch from the ‘gold master’ CD as it were; the final Gutsy release.

I’m using a ThinkPad T40 (Radeon 7500) and to cut a long story short it hosed the system, it didn’t appear to boot, until I struck Alt+F1 after the GRUB menu; and then it splurged out some error and booted normally but without the progress bar. I’m sorry but that is one bug that absolutely sucks. This is the very kind of regression (Feisty didn’t do it) that engenders the feeling that ‘Linux’ is not ready. Sorry, but after finding out this is not a rare occurrence–why in the devil was this not fixed before release; this is a show stopper bug that most users would not even think of hitting Alt+F1 after GRUB. Sorry but frankly this is a huge minus point for the Ubuntu Gutsy release as it stands today from a fresh install.

Feisty does not do this, not did a Feisty install upgraded to Gutsy. You can fix it but I am really quite shocked that such a regression and bug of this type was allowed to slip through the final release. If a system apparently not booting because a config file is wrong is not a show stopper bug during release candidate stage, what is?

Anyway… Sneering aside and a general real pissed-off-ness (not because it’s late and I’ve torn my hair out over this one; but because this is so bloody lame to make it into Gutsy’s final ISO…) what you need to do is hit Alt + F1 after GRUB’s message then you’ll see a text based boot, log in when GDM/login screen appears. Open a terminal.

Enter:

sudo nano /etc/usplash.conf

In there is the following probably:

# Usplash configuration file
xres=1280
yres=1024

Change this to:

# Usplash configuration file
xres=1024
yres=768

Save (Ctrl + O) and Exit (Ctrl + X) then run:

sudo update-usplash-theme usplash-theme-ubuntu

Then when that’s done (it might take a couple of minutes that last one), reboot and then all should be fine.

I guess for SXGA+ ThinkPads you could enter xres=1400 and yres=1050 but I’ve not tested it.

Let’s hope they sort this one out ASAP as it pisses all over a good release of Ubuntu as it stands. Sorry to be so frank, I love Linux, I love the ethos and Ubuntu does so many things right but I’m ashamed of this one, there’s no excuses and hell if I was a beginner with Ubuntu and Linux and had this problem; I’d probably have reached for the Windows restore disc or partition by now.

Sorry to be sour about this one but I’m tired and this is just a stupid stupid thing. I hope this one is sorted ASAP and the distro CD is updated to fix this issue that is affecting quite a lot of users; not just the T40.

Otherwise Gutsy is great so far.

Ok that’s it, I’m getting some sleep. I’ve been awake for 20 hours now and only had about 4 hours sleep last night as it is(!)