Mech Wars, coming soon!

June 19th, 2008 by Marc F.


This robot stuff is getting more and more freaky.  I got this link from one of my rss feeds.  Check out Robot Dreams for more information.  I’m telling you, when the Mech wars start - Japan will come crashing down on the US.  We’ll probably have armored soldiers, but they’ll have pilotless machines killing our fellas.  Come on, US, step up the the 22nd century.

Flock

June 17th, 2008 by Marc F.

The social web browser

What is Flock?  I don’t know… ha-ha.  Seriously; I’m not too clear, but I found it on my RSS feed today from LinuxInsider.  So far it looks great.  It’s a web browser targeted to users of social networks, heh - that’s me!  You can have a side tab with your friends from different networks and you can even click n drag pictures to them to quickly share. Sounds like fun.  It’s based on Firefox (win win) so I’ll try it when I get home.

You can find more information from Flock’s web site.

Using Linux to Order Pizza!

June 13th, 2008 by Marc F.

I saw this on a post from Fresh Ubuntu podcast. You gotta love linux programmers. I’m a big fan of ordering pizza online. The problem is the closest Dominos, in my area, keeps screwing up the orders. Besides that - this video is awesome and I’m going to install it just to try it out.

Here’s the site to download the application: www.beigerecords.com/cory/pizza_party/

Evolution: Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync

June 3rd, 2008 by Marc F.

GNOME Evolution LogoQuick Answer: Delete any related file ending in “.ev-summary” in the ~/.evolution/mail/local/ folder.  Make sure Evolution is closed before you do this.

Rant: Here’s my ordeal with this horrible error, at least to a noob in linux, like myself.  I couldn’t figure out why I was getting this error.  When I opened Evolution I would get a pop-up saying “Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync”.  I thought it was my mail stored on my server, I have 4 pop accounts and I ended up deleting all the old emails 500+ each (Yeah I’m a pack rat).  It was literally driving me crazy because it wanted to redownload ALL my old emails.

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Propriatory nVidia Drivers vs. Livna

June 1st, 2008 by Marc F.

nVidia Logo

I’m having a hard time understanding what makes Livna so hot, in the linux-world.  To my understanding they are better than getting videocard drivers from nVidia’s web site because they are opensource and when you install the latest kernel update - your card won’t go bonk!? on you.  As for me, I’ve been using nVidia’s propriatory drivers because that’s the only way I get World of Warcraft or any other video game to work.

The only issue that I have to deal with right now IS, when my kernel is updated.  I have to run through the Xserver configuration.  Once I get into my desktop, I would then switch back to my propriatory drivers or CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE back out to a full shell environment to reinstall them.  It is a bit of a hassle, but I have yet to jump on the band wagon of Livna.

Compiling Linux Apps from Source

May 13th, 2008 by Marc F.

Just wanted to share this great resource with folks. My brother has recently gotten into linux and he’s trying to stick it out because of the difficulty factor. He got very confused, as did we all, about installing applications and understanding how things are separated in open source and not all bundled together like Windows - where in windows your OS/Desktop/Kernel are all known as Microsoft Windows - compared to linux where your kernel, desktop, distributions, applications are all different applications working together.

OK; I’m ranting. Linux Reality is an awesome podcast, which was retired at episode 100. I’ve downloaded all his files and I listen to it periodically. A good replacement would be Going Linux. This one that I’m sharing is about compiling linux application from the provided source.

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icon for podpress  Linux Reality, Episode 41: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How to Backup Your Linux Data

May 12th, 2008 by Marc F.

CDs

Since I’m new to linux, one of the most important tip to know is how to back up your data. With Windows we’re all used to the fact that our data is saved in multiple areas on the computer. Unless you’re very computer savvy it’s hard to know where everything is. It’s a bit different with linux. The files to your applications may be in different areas of the file structure, but all of your important confirguration files to those applications is conviently saved in your /home directory.

Hidden Files and Folders

You may not see them at first. That’s because they are hidden. If you’re using the GNOME desktop, then your file browser (equivilent to Windows Explorer) is Nauttilus. Find your /home directory, usually found /home/{username}/. You can either click on View | Show Hidden Files, or keyboard shortcut CTRL+H to show your hidden files and folders. Once that’s done you will see files and folder that begin with a period.

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How to Kill and Restart X Server

May 10th, 2008 by Marc F.

A GUI is a very complex piece of software and there could be any number of reasons why it would lock up on you. If you need to kill your x server and then restart it, here are some tips:

Killing X server via Command

Type “init 3″ in your terminal and that should kill x server.  If it doesn’t find the command, then switch to the root user by typing “su -” (you will need to know the root password).

Restarting X server

Simply use the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE. Some times this will help, but this combination will explicitly restart the X server.

Working with a Console

If the previous keyboard combination did not work then try CTRL+ALT+F1. This will not kill X server, it will simply open a full screen console. I believe Red Hat and Fedora Core have F1-F6 as options. If you want to switch back to a GUI environment use the keyboard combination CTRL+ALT+F7.

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What’s Your Epsonality?

April 11th, 2008 by Marc F.

What\'s your Esponality!?
Companies now-a-days are doing great things in their marketing department. I just learned today that my epsonality rating is CX9400 - what a number right? Well it’s really a clever way of trying to match your needs with Epson’s products. I think they did their job - if I had the $149.99 to purchase their printer I would have done just that. Since I don’t, right now, I will certainly think of Epson when I’m ready to purchase my next printer. I normally go with Brother because of their durability and price for laser printers, but we’ll see. Check out their site take the test yourself. They put a lot of thought into this marketing campaign and I deem it successful!

www.epsonality.com

Postponing Windows Vista Activation!?

March 26th, 2008 by Marc F.

Windows Vista Logo

I found this very interesting article doing a Google search on “Vista Activation”. I had to put on this site to help keep this idea/article alive. I took excerpts and posted them here. You can find the full article here, http://windowssecrets.com/comp/070315/ I would suggest that everyone read this article; it’s a bit long, but it gives you a good insight to the slack these computer companies have. It does benefit us, though.  Overall; the process didn’t work for me, but it did give me some hope - at the time.  The good that came out of that is it forced me to switch to linux and I’m now, proudly, running Fefora 8. ;)

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