Ashley George – S.A.S.S. Agent

I have another mini-comic to share, this time starring the lovely Ashley George.  This one shows the moment she is first activated at S.A.S.S. headquarters – and what she decides to do.

Thanks again to A.B.Lust for making this one so sexy.

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Sarina Valentina – S.A.S.S. Agent

Because I enjoyed the experience of making and reading SASS so much, I commissioned a 2-page mini-comic for Sarina Valentina.  A.B.Lust did some more awesome artwork for me, and I love the way it turned out.

This shows Sarina’s badass side.

Enjoy!

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S.A.S.S. – Shemale Android Sex Sirens

A new fembot comic has arrived!  This one is catered to my relatively new sexual interest in shemales, and, well, the title is self explanatory.

I must thank the superb artist A.B.Lust for drawing, inking and colouring this comic.  Copyright 2011 by Robotman and A.B.Lust.

Without further ado, here it is!

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So much for predictions.

Bah.  I was gonna blog.  I used to blog.  Now I just work.  Bah.

So what’s changed in Robotman’s life recently?  I have had all hope beaten out of me, for one thing.  But do not despair!  I’m only talking about my job.  I’ve got plenty of hope outside of my shitty job of being stuck with a brain among what is basically a product-producing and shipping slime mold with a fancy schmancy logo.

And I’ve been sick!  Boy have I been sick!  I had about four nasty, horrid infections at the beginning of the year.  No, not THOSE kind of infections.  Lung, ear, and throat infections.  And I have the flu as we speak!  Huzzah!!!

And I had to take another week off because of exhaustion.  But do you remember what happened last time I had to take time off work for exhaustion?  That’s right, I got a good bonus from my job and was able to commission Sexdroids in Space.

We shall see what… oh fuck it.  No need to be coy.  I’m going to announce it in the very next post anyway, so I have another comic ready.

This post is all about bitching.  Grumble.

Anyway, the main point I wanted to make was that I won’t be posting regularly any time soon as my days are still fucking STUPID long because of my commute.  That should be all good by 2013.  Fuck.

EDIT:  The HTML text entry window in WordPress 3 seems not to be shitting the bed when I use it.  Huzzah!!!

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Hey, I remember this!

Wow!  This is a neat blog!  Some of it’s funny and some of it makes sense!  And it’s all about me and the silly things I like!

Yes, it’s been a very long while since I’ve updated this blog.  Not to put too fine a point on things, but that’s because I have virtually no time to myself any more.  I’m sure you’ve read all about it before.  The horrible long commutes.  The days filled with idiots.  The unrealistic expectations that I get paid to somehow meet.

But let me tell you, I have some more blogging to do!  I’m not done babbling on about my favourite music, video games and fembot fantasies.  Somewhere close below this post is a post about the legendary imaginary band Croydon.  I do believe I promised I would get some more great info out to the world about their remarkable story.

Well, that will have to wait.  Because I’ve just had me an awesome two days of complete rest and vegetation.  I’ve done NO work.  That’s because I have the next 5 days off from work too, and I don’t have to be back at my shitty job until January 3rd.

Huzzah!

So here’s an update on the good stuff that’s been going on in Robotman’s life… which can basically be compressed down to the last two days anyway.  It’s fucking sad, isn’t it?  Wake, shower, commute, work, commute, shower, sleep.

Okay, I’m getting all upset again about it.

I’ve been playing video games again.  This time, I’ve been delving into my console emulators and roms, which combine with a USB gamepad to make everything better.

Actually, this has a bit of a back story.  I set up a computer that Uncle Furry had graciously donated to a feller we worked with.  While I did that, I put a bunch of emulators and games on there for him.  He got fired on Christmas Eve, so he may never get that computer.  Oh well.  Nice fucking company I work for… firing someone on Christmas Fucking Eve.

In any case, I donated an old Logitech USB game controller that I had bought a while ago.  Seeing as how these things are getting rather scarce, I bought another one to replace it and decided to actually install the Logitech software that came along with it.

Normally, the idea of installing software by Logitech on one of my computers is right up there with self-trepanation by chisel.  But I decided to try it out this time simply because the software offered the promise of setting up custom keystrokes to controller buttons.

Why would I do something so outlandish, you ask?

Well, I’ve got this emulator called “MESS“, which stands for Multi-Emulator Super System.  And it’s the only program I have that can emulate some obscure and oddball old systems like the Fairchild Channel F, Arcadia 2001, Vectrex, Atari 5200 and Atari 7800.  None of my favourite games are on any of those systems, but I have fun just by booting up any game on those to see how the graphics and sound perform.

I’m a geek, that’s why.

The problem I’ve had with MESS in the past is that although I can get these emulator “modes” to work and load and play games, I could never get the fucking joystick part of the equation to work.  So I tried a different approach.

I just set the “input” mode to keyboard only, and then mapped certain keys to certain buttons on the Logitech controller.  MESS uses arrow keys for motion, so I mapped those to the left analog stick.  The Z, X, C and V keys get used as buttons, so I mapped those to the four Logitech pad buttons.  I mapped lots more buttons to other keys too, and in the process learned which keys/buttons effect which games.

And as a result, I actually PLAYED some of these games for the first time ever – particularly the ones for the Channel F and the Arcadia 2001.  Rather crappy games, but in the case of the Channel F, come on.  Atari wasn’t even out yet!

So that was my Saturday.  Sunday saw me setting up more emulators and even setting up Logitech pad keystrokes for more functionality too.  The Commodore 64 emulator is much easier to run now that I can access the program menu and rom directory with the gamepad.  And with that new gamepad I’ve had a blast visiting old games from consoles like the Sega Master System, the TurboGrafx-16, the Nintendo 64 and the Neo Geo.

Lol, Japan.

And not a damn stitch of mine or anyone else’s laundry was done, nor vacuuming (except by Roomba), nor bathroom cleaning, nor other housework.  That just means I have to do all that shit tomorrow.  But I’m fully rested and feeling better than I have in literally weeks.

So, by bloody rights, I’ll post more to this blog tomorrow!  And the next day!  And the day after that!  Or maybe I won’t.  It depends on how far into a vegetative state I get.

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A fun weekend of doing as little as possible

As little work as possible, that is.  I’ve been really busy this weekend with more Mikeification of more Jimi Hendrix.  The process shouldn’t have taken three weeks.  It doesn’t take more than about an hour to do an album.  But I have zero time during the week to get fun stuff like this done, so the 27 or so Hendrix albums I do have took a very long time to get done.

And the fruits of my labour?

I’m listening to it right now.  Jimi’s never sounded so good, IHMO.  (In High Mumble Opinion.  Yes, I’m livin’ the good life right now.  Sipping fine, flavourful tea while playing Age of Empires II and listening to some of that thar Jimi.

I was gonna start doing some other music today… but I’m all Mikeified out.  I also thought about trying another Linux distro on a partition of my glorious Windows 98 laptop.  The current Ubuntu 10.04 installation doesn’t recognize the sound hardware… so I can’t really do anything useful with it in Linux.  I was going to give Debian or possibly the latest Ubuntu a spin on it… but that will have to wait.

My plans for the rest of my (short) weekend are to update FembotWiki and have some supper.  Not much fun, I know.  But I had to get over a case of exhaustion again.  I fucking hate that tired feeling I get from working too hard for my money.  You know, that feeling that goes from “I wish this work week was over” to “I simply can not make it another hour”.  I’m extremely glad to be rid of a troublesome co-worker, but the coincidental increase in work that has been piling up is fucking brutal.

At least I no longer have to clean up after her.  Fucking bitch.

And it is a coincidental increase.  I went from sitting around waiting for work to being neck-deep in it.

Sorry, this is devolving into complaining!  And I already have way too many posts of that nature.  Here is a picture of a kitten:

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You remember ol’ Croydon, eh?

The Mikeification of Jimmy Hendrix continues apace.

Begin the thawing of Jim Nabors!

Yeah… something like that.

I have a long weekend!  Hooray!  I booked Friday off!  Hooray!  I have a fucking cold!  Hooray!

And I have a fever too.  When I get fevers, I get a stupid amount of stuff done.  I’ve read volumes of books before while delirious with fever… I’ve done all kinds of computer stuff while feverish, and now I’m having a fit of furious mikeification while feverish.

And I’ve gotten a good half of those Jimi Hendrix albums done.  Hooray!

I won’t say hooray any more.  Sorry about that.

I do feel that I should relay some very funny stories now.  These stories will probably identify my “Robotman” persona to some people I know… if they ever search Google that closely… but whatthefuckever.  They’re funny, so I’ll tell them.

Actually, it’s only one story… really.  And here it is.

At my last job, some stock came in with a certain pattern called “Croydon”.  Croydon is a town near London, England.  That’s probably the last time this story will stay firmly rooted in reality.

My coworker was trying to find where we kept the “Croydon” pattern stock, and he called out to me “Where the fuck does the Croydon go?”  I immediately answered “That must be a special order.  But it totally sounds like some heavy metal band.”

And that, my friends, is how the greatest heavy metal band on Earth was born.

Being a silly goof-off, and my coworker being the same, we decided to have fun with it.  This began by simply relating their legendary exploits.  The days of drinking and debauchery while gigging around the motorways of England.  The nights of ear-splitting rock n’ roll from riotous concerts throughout the world.  The excess.  The drugs.  The groupies.  The notorious 45-minute drum solos.

Croydon became a caricature of cheesy 80s metal… a cross between Iron Maiden and Judas Priest with a generous dose of Spinal Tap thrown in for good measure.

And it was all so funny to us, that we just couldn’t keep it to ourselves.  So we decided to ask other people:

“So… you remember ol’ Croydon, eh?”

We were quite serious when we asked this.  Working as receivers in a warehouse, we asked the truck drivers this question – time permitting.  Astoundingly, about HALF of the truck drivers we asked said “yes”.  Not only did 50% of these guys admit to remembering the existence of a band that never existed, some of them had fond memories of them!

This was too good to forget.  We laughed our asses off at these people.  Some of the more enthusiastic responders became known by us and some other people we worked with as Croydon’s biggest fans.  We even dubbed one guy “Uncle Croydon”.

Among the best responses were:

The long-haired stoner dude, who responded to “It’s the first time they’ve played here for 15 years!” with “Dude!  I was at that show!”

The old trucker from the U.S. who calmly and matter-of-factly said “I saw them open up for the Eagles… back when they were nobody.”

The old toothless mover who enthusiastically proclaimed “Back then, you couldn’t walk into a bar in Calgary without hearing ol’ Croydon on the juke box!”

Uncle Croydon gave us our favourite reply.  After he had admitted to remembering them, he paused and said “I’m just trying to remember one of their hit singles…”  I said “Eat the Steel?”, and he gleefully said “Eat the Steel!  That’s the one!”

And the guy wearing a “West Coast Choppers” shirt.  When my coworker complimented him on it, the trucker told us how expensive it had been.  When my coworker said “Just like my Croydon shirt.”, the trucker said “Wow!  They’re still around?”

Then there was Karl.  Oh, Karl.  He used to work with me, then got fired and hired by the moving company who did most of our delivery work.  While he was with that other company, I asked him the question.  His immortal response: “Yeah, I’ve heard some of their songs.  I just don’t like them.”

So for Karl, I made a copy of “Advance and Vanquish” by 3 Inches of Blood and labelled it “Inbred Junkie” by Croydon.  When I saw him next, he said “I’m impressed.  Croydon’s really good.”

Of COURSE they’re really good!  Do you think half the truck drivers in this town would remember them so fondly and vividly if they sucked?

Some extremely funny responses came from those who didn’t remember them too.  Like Jeff… who simply answered “No.  Is this a joke?”

And the truck driver who – obviously running behind and in a hurry – was preparing his paperwork while we asked him the question and told him that the upcoming concert would be their first show here in 15 years.   When we said “You know who’s gonna be opening up for them?  KISS!”, he stopped shuffling his paperwork, looked up at us and tersely said “KISS huh?  Sign here.”

Good times, good times.  I think tomorrow I’ll post about the fictional history and mythology of Croydon.  I actually have a few web pages that I made for a Croydon website.  I never got around to posting it online, but it features a partial discography and band biography.

And one of these days, I’m gonna make a few Croydon t-shirts with their classic 80s “metal” logo.

Stay tuned!

Oh, and that “second” story… We did the same thing a handful of times with “Big Joe Clapton”.  He was remembered, too.

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JIMMAAAAAAY!!!!

No, not this guy…


No, not even this guy…


THIS guy.


This blog post is about the late great Jimi Hendrix, and his awesome talent with the Play-Doh Mop-Top play set.


Man, no one could use that thing like he did.

Just kidding.  This was his tool of choice:


Yikes!  It’s VERY SCAAAAARY in German!!!

Okay, I’m rambling and babbling again, but it’s been a while since I posted something here on this here blog here, so here.


That’s a picture of Jimi lighting his harmonica on fire.

Why am I bothering you with stupid “jokes” about Jimi Hendrix on this fine Thanksgiving day?

Well, you’re only wondering that under circumstances that are very unlikely to have coincided.

  1. You are Canadian
  2. You read this blog

That pretty much just leaves me.  Maybe Uncle Furry is reading this too.  Hi Uncle Furry!

To answer the question nobody read above, it’s because I am in the process of “Mikeifying” my Jimi Hendrix music collection and getting it onto my iPod.  I’ve already done the three “Experience” albums today, and I’m in the process of doing the much maligned “Voodoo Soup” compilation.


I happen to like Voodoo Soup.  It’s got all those essential vitamins that keep me repeatedly arriving at my job and doing my job like, you know, a zombie.

This CD is also swell.  I didn’t know much about it back in 1995 when I bought it.  I only knew that it was a compilation of tracks that Hendrix had left completed or unfinished before he could get around to making his next album.  I didn’t know that these had been compiled from 3 posthumous albums put out by a producer who had hired musicians to “fill in” or replace some bass, drum and even guitar parts to make a string of posthumous Hendrix albums.

A dubious practice for sure, but I look at it like how Phil Spector killed that woman a few years ago finished “Let It Be” for the Beatles.  Phil, that ol’ ladykiller, made a listenable and enjoyable album out of some unfinished tracks and demos.  I like “Let It Be” for what it is, even after hearing “Let It Be: Naked”.  I don’t believe I’ve ever listened to “Let It Be” naked, however.

Anyway (remember folks, using that word means I’m a bad writer), some bloke (British for dude) named Alan Douglas went and “finished” a bunch of songs and milked them for all they were worth in the ’70s.  This Voodoo Soup compilation has some of the more egregious trickery, fuckery and rookery removed, but the tracks “Room Full of Mirrors” and “Stepping Stone” do contain drumming by some dude who was in The Knack.

Ahem.

Also, apologies for using the term “rookery” above.  It has nothing to do with the topic at hand.


I should have perhaps used “Connery”.


That’s better.

And I’ve heard the versions of these songs done “properly” without additional recording too.  I haven’t heard them for over five years, so don’t ask me which versions I like better.  I like them both just fine, though I’ve listened to Voodoo Soup far more often and more closely than I have the later (1997) releases that contain these songs.

I have a lot of Mikeification ahead of me to finish all this Hendrix.  When I was a young man, I bought every Hendrix CD (or cassette) I could get my hands on.  I have lots of live stuff and bootleg stuff and re-issue stuff, so to sort it all out will be some work.  And to think I’d left all that great music off my iPod for so long because I had overplayed it and was sick of a lot of it!

Seriously though, I don’t need to hear “Purple Haze” again for a very, very long time.

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“Wow man, that sounds fuckin good.”

I am rather talented when it comes to Mikeifying music, I must say.

What is Mikeifying, I hear you ask?

Well, Mikeification is the process of me using Cool Edit to adjust the audio properties of songs that I put onto my iPod.  Basically, I makes the tunes sounds more gooder.  The tricks I use are manifold – multifarious, even.  I use a noise reduction plugin and EQing for the most part.  And it’s such a simple process that I wonder why the people who actually release these albums don’t do it more.

Oh, before I proceed in my rambling any further, I should note that Cool Edit is now called Adobe Audition.  Don’t waste your money on it though, use Audacity.  It’s free.

Ahem.  I have just dun gone and Mikeified 6 Camel albums.  One of those was ripped from a DVD.  That DVD itself and another one of the albums were so obscure that I had to import the bloody things from the far off and distant land of England.  In any case, 3 of those albums were live performances with less than perfect sound quality.  But I have changed that!  Ha!

I went backwards chronologically this time, and worked on the one from 1985 through to the one from 1972.  And I finally got 2 versions of a very long song that Camel used to do in their early days.  It’s called “Homage to the God of Light”, and it was a Peter Bardens solo number that they did on stage.  I’ve got some good 70s Prog listening ahead of me on the bus rides next week.

Shall I complain about those fucking bus rides again?  Nah.  Suffice to say that the construction is still going on and I still have very long days.

And those start again fairly soon.  It’s almost bedtime here on this Sunday.  I didn’t get much time for vegetation, but on the plus side, I got a lot done.

Mikeification!!!

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It’s Summertime!

Well break out the fucking pointy party hats and such because Calgary is getting some nice weather again.  We’re not breaking any records, I’m sure, but this is the kind of weather we usually get in July and August.  And it will be here for a week.  And it’s probably the reason why I was stricken with such a massive headache on Friday.

The pressure has stabilized now, so I’m okay.  Don’t panic, I’m OKAY.

Also, don’t picnic, I’m O’Shea.  Ever wonder just how far down I’ll stoop to make a stupid pun or “funny” comment?  Pretty far.

But I’ll enjoy this good weather while it lasts.  The previous week saw some damn cold temperatures… below freezing at night and everything.  That’s what I get for living in a high-altitude, high-latitude city.

I remembered an extremely funny and, oddly enough, clean joke today.  But now I’ve forgotten what it was.  So how bout just the punchline to another joke?

A: ˙ʇno ǝʌıɹp uɐɔ ǝʍ puɐ sʎǝʞ ʎɯ puıɟ ǝɯ dlǝH

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How XScreensaver got me to use Xfce again

Here’s another nerdy story for you all!  Gather around the glow of the CRT, it’s time to get geeky!

I recently got a DVD from Jolly Old England (that’s what the country is officially called, I think) because it’s so obscure I couldn’t get it here in Canada.  The video is this:


Made by these guys:


“Pressure Points” by Camel.  A live performance which I shall get onto my iPod as a bunch of mp3s soon.  The DVD was imported from a foreign land, but the CD version was fricken impossible to find.

Once I got the DVD, I followed along with my plan, which was to use AcidRip to make an avi file, then use Sound Converter to get a high-quality mp3 file from the avi.

I used this here laptop that I’m using now for that.  Well, at least, I TRIED to use it.  AcidRip works and all that jazz, but I was having a problem.  You see, I used LXDE as my desktop environment on this thing.  And even though I had the fucking thing disabled, the XScreensaver would kick in.  And because this is a laptop, the screensaver would “lock me out” and stop all processes that were ongoing.

So when I started AcidRip and went to bed, Xscreensaver kicked in and stopped AcidRip dead in its tracks.  I should have simply uninstalled Xscreensaver… which is what I did later on, but that didn’t occur to me.

What I did instead was to boot into Xfce.  This is an Xubuntu installation after all.  I ran AcidRip in Xfce no problem.  It worked overnight and gave me that video file I could use to make the mp3s.

And while I was in Xcfe, I reminisced.  I fondly remembered the things I truly liked about it and decided to see if I could get some funkier themes present for when I booted into it next time.

This is the point in our fairy tale in which the dragon enters.


While I was scrolling through a list of window managers to use, I selected one called “Wildbush”.  Now, while in the Xfce settings manager, if you click on a different window manager, Xfce starts using it right away.  And thus, because of a very nasty bug, my Xfce session crashed immediately and kicked me to the login screen.  But this dragon bug was nastier even than that… I was completely unable to log into my Xfce session at all.

Had I had more patience and better luck with Google, I would have been able to boot back into my LXDE session (which I could still do) and edit some file or files to remove “Wildbush” from Xfce and make the window manager some other choice.  But I didnt.

I decided to just reinstall Xubuntu.  There’s no data I need to save on this computer, just functionality.  So 1 hour later, I had my fresh Xubuntu installation just itching for me to change it up and customize it.  It went from this:


To this:



Those screenshots include Windows XP running in VirtualBox, which I did later.  But the main work was done quickly.  I installed the restricted extras that allow me to watch and rip DVDs and play other non-free media formats.

One thing that I like now that I actually didn’t care for before is window compositing.  That’s the fancy schmancy term for “snazzy effects” AKA “eye candy”.  I’m not going overboard here with rotating cubes and warble and wobble and bobble effects… no.  I just like a little transparency in the window frame now.  You can see the effect in those screenshots above.  That’s the “TechniX 2″ theme with “Nostromo 2″ icons and a window theme called “LiNsta Black Flat”.  All are available from Xfce-Look.org, so feel free to head over there if you run Xfce.  I think they’ll work in LXDE too.

But for gods’ sake stay away from Wildbush!


Bush is always bad news, man.

One thing that particularly impressed me about the latest version of Xfce is that it’s no longer all crashy crashy when I run VirtualBox inside it.  I can even move icons on the desktop around without bringing the whole session down with me.  Bravo!

And since I’m so impressed with Xfce again, I replaced Gnome with it on my fast computer.  It’s a good fit there as I use the same themes and run Windows XP virtually over there too.

And I think I can stop boring you with details about the software I use.  You can now continue with your day.

Just watch out for Wildbush!!!

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My writing laptop

Another update to my long dormant blog.  And only possible because I had a vacation day on Friday and therefore this is a long weekend for me.  Friday was a very bad day for me though.  Fuck you, weather headaches.

Lately, I’ve been using my laptop more and more.  This was one I bought in 2004, I believe.  I’m not talking about the vintage 2000 laptop I got for free that runs my awesome Windows 98 setup and serves as  dedicated Civilization II terminal.  No, I’ve probably bored you to tears with the details of THAT machine.

This is a Compaq Presario R3000.  HP made it after they bought Compaq.  It’s a very good piece of hardware, and the only thing I’ve ever had to replace was the hard drive.  But everything else is neato.  And this is what I’ve done a fair bit of writing on in the past.  I likes the keyboard here because my clumsy fingers glide faster over the keyboard.

And since this is my writing PC again, things are a little easier for me to accomplish now that I have Windows XP installed as a virtual OS on my Linux desktop.  That is no coincidence.  You see, I tried using Abiword to do some writing.  And as is congruent with my previous experiences with that program, Abiword fucking sucks.  And that’s when it’s not crashing and taking your writing with it.

The idea behind it is quite admirable, though.  A free, open source word processor with a basic set of features.  Perfect for basic writing and composition tasks, no?

No.  It’s buggy and glitchy and should probably be put out of its misery.

I started that little writing project on this here laptop with Abiword, but I just couldn’t finish it that way.  I tried Open Office too, but it doesn’t run properly on this computer.  The font rendering in both Abiword and Open Office is shit… donkey shit in the case of Abiword and majestic lion shit in the case of Open Office… I suppose.

I don’t want to use Open Office for a couple of reasons.  First, the text I type is too small.  What’s that you say, oh heckler?  Simply use the “zoom” feature?  Oddly enough, on this computer Open Office’s zoom feature is broken.  The second reason I don’t want to use it is because it’s really overkill for what I need.  I just need something I can lets me type words, wraps the texts, and checks the spelling.

So to finish my little writing project, I went back to Cetus CWordpad.  That, you may recall from earlier posts I’ve made on this blog, is a crack of Microsoft’s Wordpad application from 1995.  The crack added a spellchecker and a fullscreen mode.  Trouble is, WINE notwithstanding, Windows apps don’t run on Linux.

So off to the realm of VirtualBox I went again.  I installed Windows XP on this Xubuntu setup, and got CWordpad as well as TextAloud MP3 and a dictionary application called WordWeb.  And that’s all I really need for writing, proofreading and vocabularizing (not an actual word).  It’s a shame I had to resort to digging up some Windows apps, but the state of Linux apps is kind of crappy sometimes.

Now, since this laptop is mainly used for writing again, I’ve decided to actually go ahead and use a Linux app for the writing part of that.  It’s the familiar and stable Gedit text editor.  It has a spellcheck feature and the ability to display any font in any size.  So that’s what this very post is being written in right now.

I still have Windows XP running on my desktop so I can use TextAloud mp3 for the proofreading.  I suppose I could use eSpeak GUI for that… but I’m still not a fan of its drunken Scottish C3PO voice.  No offence to inebriated Scotch droids, but it’s sometimes hard to understand.  And WordWeb is still there.  I should try the “Dictionary” applet for my Xfce desktop and see how it compares… excuse me for a moment.

Meh.  It’s not so bad.  I had tried Ubuntu’s dictionary applet about 3 years ago.  The fact that I’d never used it since will tell you a lot about how I liked it.  WordWeb may not have all of the English vocabulary in it, but it’s a heck of a lot faster and better designed than what I just used.

But I will have to continue this rant some other time.

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Sorry about the lack of posts lately

Yeah.  What he said.  I have no fucking time to myself any more.  Grumble.  And I had one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had in my life today.  I trust you, oh reader, are doing better.

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Another Ubuntu user

Last week, I had actually brought back my friend’s computer to work so that i could give it to her.  But before I did, I asked her if she would like to have an alternative operating system installed beside Vista.

I explained that she would be able to choose which one to boot when she turned on her computer, and she was excited by the idea.  So I took that laptop home again and installed a REAL OS onto it.

I got out my Ubuntu 10.04 CD and got that wondrously user-friendly Ubuntu onto a 60GB slice of her hard drive.  I installed all the apps and features I could think of, including lots of educational software and games for her kid.

And I even downloaded some icon themes, controls and window borders so that I could give her a wide variety of themes to choose from.  I think she’ll like the pink look everything has now.

And Ubuntu works like a dream on her Dell.  The screen is sharp and crisp, all the advanced graphic features work and even wireless is working like a champ.

And I wrote up a little hot-to/pointer sheet for her, which you can see in glorious Kazakhstan PDF format right here.  I’d post the text into this here blog, but I find that things are much easier on the eyes when there are helpful and relevant images interspersed in with the text.


See?  I knew you’d agree.

I’ll let you know how she likes her computer setup… because I’m sure it’s a matter of vast import to you and yours.

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Defraggler

Thanks again to the intrepid Uncle Furry, I’ve found out about a great program from the makers of CCleaner.  It’s called Defraggler, and if you use that steaming pile of shit known as Windows Vista, you need this program.

See, since the old old days of Windows 95, Microsoft has included a utility to defragment hard drives.  The one for Vista, well, sucks.  It’s basically a screen with a scheduler… which is good, and then a button.  When you press the button, you see that silly-ass little blue circle rotating for what can be “minutes to hours”, and you see no other information about what the defragmenting utility is doing, and how long it’s mysterious workings might take.

Turns out, Vista’s defragmenter isn’t doing squat.  I think the whole application is a fucking decoy.


Defraggler graphically displays the blocks of a drive and colour codes them to show progress.


Pretty fucking snazzy.  It’s also actually, you know, DOING something.  There are also a bunch more features, like the ability to defragment selected files or exclude them… but I haven’t used the program much so I will reserve comment on those.

So leave it to Microsoft to sell you a bill of goods again.  I just wish Defraggler would work on my new/old Windows 98 laptop that I basically only use to play old video games like Civilization II.  The defrag application on that won’t work for some reason.

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