A few weeks back we found ourselves in New Orleans for a weekend. It was French Quarter Fest, but we were there for a wedding. We were only there for a few days, so we had fairly little time that wasn't structured or spoken for. As a result we really couldn't get out of the French Quarter while we were there, and what follows is from only that point of view.
The town felt crowded to me, and apparently exists on tourism revenue alone. I am not a big fan of crowds, so I am glad we didn't find ourselves there during Mardi Gras, or something similar, where the crowds are - I think - much larger.
French Quarter Fest is a big, free music show, with quite a few stages set up around town, in addition to the various existing music venues that were also participating. And that music was a good thing, though after a while the traditional jazz bands were starting to sound very similar. Still, we could walk just a couple of blocks and encounter some new group playing something different if we got tired of the group we were listening to. We heard biggish bands, a middle school band, and a bunch of things in between. The music was the best part of the city in my opinion.
And of course, in addition to all the music on the stages, there were the various street performers. Quite a few jazz bands, as well as a number of smaller groups, more than a few human statues, some magicians, a transformer (honestly... watch the video), a bunch of artists selling their work, and more than a few barkers for various businesses. (Huge Ass Beers, anyone?)
Everyone raves about the food in New Orleans, and we did eat reasonably well, but only if your definition of "reasonably well" includes "dramatically increasing your chances of dying from a heart attack or stroke if you stay on this diet for more than a couple of days." And given our hotel was a block or two from the French Quarter, and the number of times we were woken up by ambulances in the middle of the night, it is pretty clear a fair number of people in the city were succumbing to various - possibly diet related - medical emergencies. A look at the people attending FQF supported that suggestion, if you get my drift.
But if that was all I had to say about New Orleans I wouldn't have written this post. Sadly there were a number of things I found problematic in The Big Easy, and those are what I really want to mention.
Some simplistic research on hurricane Katrina tells me that the French Quarter was not severely damaged or flooded during that event. There was some wind damage, and a bit of flooding, but apparently it wasn't too bad. However, looking at the French Quarter today I would have thought it had been flooded out.
Streets and sidewalks are uneven at best, and a serious hazard in general. Buildings - and the famous iron balconies - sag in obvious ways. Any steel or iron that hasn't recently been painted is rusted. In short, the French Quarter is decaying right before our eyes. On top of that was a nearly omnipresent stink of sewage - I think - which I found particularly distressing while we were attempting to pick a restaurant. There was always water pooled in sidewalk damage and potholes, but it didn't rain while we were there. Perhaps that was the source of the odor?
And walking down Bourbon Street was, well, fairly offensive. I guess the various strip clubs and what-not have all set up shop there, and I understand that's part of what New Orleans is famous for, but it was all so run down and ugly that it actually felt awful. Nothing struck me as upbeat, or a place where a dancer, bartender, or bouncer might go to get a break, even if they were doing something less than desirable in the eyes of society. Instead it felt like the run down, disreputable end of the city, where people wind up when they have no choice. I avoided Bourbon Street after I figured out how I felt about it.
And then there were the people. There, too, I saw decay and degradation, as well as the PR side of things that the town wants you to see.
How many homeless do you need to see sleeping in doorways? How many kids who should be in school but were instead out tap dancing to earn a few bucks? How many obvious health problems - obesity being the easiest to spot - are straining Louisiana's health care budget?
Yes, there were happy and healthy people. I have no idea how many were locals as opposed to visitors for FQF, but there are definitely health and homelessness problems in New Orleans that are difficult to address. Interestingly, though, nearly all of the people I talked to who actually worked there - in the restaurants and hotels - left me with the impression they would like to leave town, or were already planning on it. Perhaps two felt differently, but honestly it seemed like people who live there want to leave.
And after a while, walking down the streets and seeing the leaning, decrepit buildings felt a lot like passing the homeless people sleeping in doorways. The empty shop windows - and there were more than a few of those - had a similar impact. The whole place felt physically dirty - like it could be scrubbed with bleach for decades and never get clean - and more than a bit desperate.
By the time Sunday rolled around I was glad to be getting on a plane and going home.
Of course there are problems in every town, and maybe the Central Business District or the Garden District are in better shape than the French Quarter. I didn't get there, so I don't know, and I shouldn't judge an entire town based on such a small sample of what it has to offer.
But then again, it seems - based on my admittedly skewed view of the world - that New Orleans puts the French Quarter on a pedestal. It's the place people go to have fun, the home of Mardi Gras. I can't help but feel that it ought to be more attractive than it is. Better maintained. Healthier. Less downtrodden.
So now I've been to New Orleans, and I really don't feel a need to go back. I know people who love it there, and I can see there is history to be learned and a culture to understand, but it wasn't a place that I felt comfortable. The people were friendly - and even welcoming - but it just didn't feel like a place I would want to call home.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Thursday, May 1, 2014
My Google+ Story
Yes, I am posting this on Blogger, but for a reason, which I will get to. Please be patient.
I started using G+ shortly after it opened up to general users. Previously I had used that other social network - FB, the 800 pound gorilla - and looked at a couple of others.
FB started out amusing, but the more I used it the more I began to hate it. Their technology decisions are awful, their privacy settings labyrinthine, and the defaults they select when adding new features with privacy impacts are, generally, wrong. But it was where all the cool kids were, so I went there too.
And I really got sick of it. The memes, the game posts, the inability to see all of the posts from my friends on my wall (or feed, or whatever they want to call it next week), and so on. Mostly though, it was far too much like high school. Friend counts that didn't matter, and almost no discussion of anything actually important. Yes, there were occasional posts that mattered, but they were all about events in the lives of immediate family and friends, much less about what was going on in the world.
Then, G+ arrived, and I tried it out of curiosity. Like most, I circled people I knew at first, and worked with that for a while, but as those I knew shared posts from people I didn't, I started circling a few of those, and my circles grew. And I started to learn things; not about G+, but about the world.
I cannot claim to know what Google's developers had in mind when they created G+, but I can see some of what they have wound up with, and the best explanation I've read so far that said G+ was about content curation. Think about that for a moment. G+ lets users with similar interest find each other. They don't have to be friends or know each other, like FB, and they can write full sentences - or many pages - unlike twitter.
And that fits me. I use G+ to hear from people with interesting things to say on topics I care about, and interesting points of view. I have never met most of them, and I probably never will, but here on G+ we interact.
There are people here that share posts on just about every topic imaginable. If you want to know about yak herding, you can search for it (I just did) and find all kinds of stuff.
I follow people who post about astronomy, human rights, technology, teaching, and a couple of generalists who fill my feed with fascinating articles... so many I have to pick and choose which ones I read in depth. G+ makes me smarter and keeps me informed about the topics I choose. It also gives me a place to talk with others who share my interests, and discuss complicated issues.
After a while spent on both G+ and FB, I decided I was done with FB and deleted all of my posts. (And yes, I suspect that they are still there in FB's servers, and that there is nothing I can ever do about that, but such is life.) I keep the FB account just in case I need it to sign into some system that only uses FB for authentication, but that hasn't happened yet, and the few times I have wandered down that path I stopped when I was informed that I would have to turn FB's platform apps back on. (Those got turned off a long time ago to avoid a bunch of security concerns, and I am not turning them back on, ever.)
So now I use G+ as my primary social network, and my life is much enriched.
I won't claim that G+ - or Google - is perfect. They've made mistakes, and I am sure they will make others. But the big irritants in FB are not present in G+: I know how its security settings work, and I get so much more out of the experience. I'm sure I miss a few important posts from friends over on FB that might matter, but honestly there is no way to be sure FB would have shown them to me in any case, given the idiotic scheme they use for determining who sees any given status update.
And yes, Google definitely is a big company, and bad things do happen at big companies. Not always, but sometimes. I am aware of that.
Maybe Diaspora will take off one of these days, or something similar. A social network that avoids big companies controlling the data and yet offers an environment like that of G+ - with its by-the-users content organization and curation - might be the best of all possible worlds.
But so far G+ works for me. None of the fluff, lots of great content. Anyone claiming G+ is a ghost town is probably trying to use it like FB. And why would you do that, any more than you might use Twitter like you'd use FB?
I mentioned at the beginning that I was posting this to Blogger for a reason. Two, actually. First, I have friends that follow me on Blogger that don't use G+ (at least not yet) and I hope they will see this description and consider giving G+ a try. Second, I have Blogger setup to cross post to G+ automatically, so those who follow me there will see it too.
So that's my G+ story. I hope others find G+ as valuable as I do.
#MyGooglePlusStory
I started using G+ shortly after it opened up to general users. Previously I had used that other social network - FB, the 800 pound gorilla - and looked at a couple of others.
FB started out amusing, but the more I used it the more I began to hate it. Their technology decisions are awful, their privacy settings labyrinthine, and the defaults they select when adding new features with privacy impacts are, generally, wrong. But it was where all the cool kids were, so I went there too.
And I really got sick of it. The memes, the game posts, the inability to see all of the posts from my friends on my wall (or feed, or whatever they want to call it next week), and so on. Mostly though, it was far too much like high school. Friend counts that didn't matter, and almost no discussion of anything actually important. Yes, there were occasional posts that mattered, but they were all about events in the lives of immediate family and friends, much less about what was going on in the world.
Then, G+ arrived, and I tried it out of curiosity. Like most, I circled people I knew at first, and worked with that for a while, but as those I knew shared posts from people I didn't, I started circling a few of those, and my circles grew. And I started to learn things; not about G+, but about the world.
I cannot claim to know what Google's developers had in mind when they created G+, but I can see some of what they have wound up with, and the best explanation I've read so far that said G+ was about content curation. Think about that for a moment. G+ lets users with similar interest find each other. They don't have to be friends or know each other, like FB, and they can write full sentences - or many pages - unlike twitter.
And that fits me. I use G+ to hear from people with interesting things to say on topics I care about, and interesting points of view. I have never met most of them, and I probably never will, but here on G+ we interact.
There are people here that share posts on just about every topic imaginable. If you want to know about yak herding, you can search for it (I just did) and find all kinds of stuff.
I follow people who post about astronomy, human rights, technology, teaching, and a couple of generalists who fill my feed with fascinating articles... so many I have to pick and choose which ones I read in depth. G+ makes me smarter and keeps me informed about the topics I choose. It also gives me a place to talk with others who share my interests, and discuss complicated issues.
After a while spent on both G+ and FB, I decided I was done with FB and deleted all of my posts. (And yes, I suspect that they are still there in FB's servers, and that there is nothing I can ever do about that, but such is life.) I keep the FB account just in case I need it to sign into some system that only uses FB for authentication, but that hasn't happened yet, and the few times I have wandered down that path I stopped when I was informed that I would have to turn FB's platform apps back on. (Those got turned off a long time ago to avoid a bunch of security concerns, and I am not turning them back on, ever.)
So now I use G+ as my primary social network, and my life is much enriched.
I won't claim that G+ - or Google - is perfect. They've made mistakes, and I am sure they will make others. But the big irritants in FB are not present in G+: I know how its security settings work, and I get so much more out of the experience. I'm sure I miss a few important posts from friends over on FB that might matter, but honestly there is no way to be sure FB would have shown them to me in any case, given the idiotic scheme they use for determining who sees any given status update.
And yes, Google definitely is a big company, and bad things do happen at big companies. Not always, but sometimes. I am aware of that.
Maybe Diaspora will take off one of these days, or something similar. A social network that avoids big companies controlling the data and yet offers an environment like that of G+ - with its by-the-users content organization and curation - might be the best of all possible worlds.
But so far G+ works for me. None of the fluff, lots of great content. Anyone claiming G+ is a ghost town is probably trying to use it like FB. And why would you do that, any more than you might use Twitter like you'd use FB?
I mentioned at the beginning that I was posting this to Blogger for a reason. Two, actually. First, I have friends that follow me on Blogger that don't use G+ (at least not yet) and I hope they will see this description and consider giving G+ a try. Second, I have Blogger setup to cross post to G+ automatically, so those who follow me there will see it too.
So that's my G+ story. I hope others find G+ as valuable as I do.
#MyGooglePlusStory
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
What Has Jeff Been Doing?
Here are two images. That do they have to do with each other?
The first:
The second is of the flowers sent to my home by the oral surgeon and the dentist, thanking me for letting them treat me. Really. That's what the card said.
The second:
Ignore the colors being screwed up in the second image. The flash was on and I didn't get a shot without it. It's the content that matters in any case.
So... how do those images relate?
<Insert Jeopardy "waiting for an answer" theme here while people scribble frantically on cards. Or something.>
OK! Time's up! Here's the answer, but it's not phrased as a question.
The first is an image of the tools used by an oral surgeon. I had a tooth removed and an implant stuffed into my jaw to replace it. (Note the covered hypodermic needle on the right edge of the image, in particular, if you doubt me.)
In response I have a couple of questions:
- Am I spending too much for my dental care?
- Are these guys hoping to get me back to replace more of my (admittedly bad) teeth?
- Should I go looking for a cheaper provider?
- Yes, the surgery went fine. No real pain, no swelling, no bruising, etc.
- The implant has to sit for 3 months before they can install the peg and the fake tooth.
- I've had bad teeth ever since I had braces as a kid, as far as I know. Correlation appears to be a fact between braces and gum recession and bone loss, at least in some cases, but causation isn't clear.
Finally, always remember: Teeth suck. Jeff's teeth suck absolutely.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Passwords Revisited
A while back I wrote a long post about passwords: how they work, how they are cracked, how to pick them, etc. Here's a link to it.
But computer security is an arms race. The bad guys change tactics to react to what the good guys (that would be you) do. In this case, one of the ideas that was newish (at least to me, at the time) isn't so useful anymore. Much of that post is still relevant, but apparently hackers have started cracking passwords made of disparate words strung together.
Here's a post from Bruce Schneier - someone I trust in the security field - that discusses choosing good passwords. His preferred technique is one I discussed as well, so not all is lost.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/choosing_secure_1.html
I'm really glad to hear him say that changing passwords regularly is more trouble than it is worth. I wish more computer security places understood that.
So, read what Bruce has to say. It's good advice.
But computer security is an arms race. The bad guys change tactics to react to what the good guys (that would be you) do. In this case, one of the ideas that was newish (at least to me, at the time) isn't so useful anymore. Much of that post is still relevant, but apparently hackers have started cracking passwords made of disparate words strung together.
Here's a post from Bruce Schneier - someone I trust in the security field - that discusses choosing good passwords. His preferred technique is one I discussed as well, so not all is lost.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/choosing_secure_1.html
I'm really glad to hear him say that changing passwords regularly is more trouble than it is worth. I wish more computer security places understood that.
So, read what Bruce has to say. It's good advice.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Well now... that's something nice I never knew...
I'm sure I am the only one who didn't know this until just now, but if you're a Chrome user, you can grab a tab and drag it off, away from the chrome window, and it will get put into a new chrome window by itself. And, correspondingly, you can drag a tab into another chrome Window and it will get sucked in and become a tabbed page in that window.
There's a bit of trickiness to getting tabs to merge into other windows... I haven't yet figured out all the magic, but it definitely does work.
I can't tell you how many times I have opened a new window and then loaded up a page I had open elsewhere so I could compare things side by side.
I wish I'd known about this a long time ago!
There's a bit of trickiness to getting tabs to merge into other windows... I haven't yet figured out all the magic, but it definitely does work.
I can't tell you how many times I have opened a new window and then loaded up a page I had open elsewhere so I could compare things side by side.
I wish I'd known about this a long time ago!
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
An ad I wrote for our local freecycle list
Apparently my muse bit me this afternoon while I was composing an ad for our local freecycle mailing list. Someone has already responded telling me they really liked it. That's nice, and it causes me to overcome my usual reticence and share it here. Maybe you'll enjoy the ad too, but unless you live close to me, don't bother asking for the material, and if you are that close, why aren't you on the list already? (Seriously... email me and ask how to join it.)
A few weeks back we finally got around to taking that old closet system apart and installing something we liked better. Yay us! Yay for the annual Elfa sale!
Sadly the old system didn't go quietly into that cold night, or something. Plastic bits broke, metal bits bent, some screws that held shelves together were rusted or corroded into the melamine in odd ways. And, being an aggressive recycler, everything plastic or metal has already been hauled away to help the Gray Bears feed people in need. (I'll bet that donation bought them all of 5% of a banana, or something.)
What I am left with is a bunch of pieces of melamine. You know the stuff: particle board, covered in white plastic. Occasionally ground up by unscrupulous business people in far away countries and included in pet food and baby formula to make it look like there is more protein in there than there really is.**
How much melamine you ask? I'm glad you did. This much:
OFFER: melamine boards (it's a long shot, I know...)
Back in the dark ages - before the invention of electricity and running water - when we bought our home, the previous owner installed a set of closet shelves and rods in the master bedroom closet. Despite my telling him not to do it, he did it anyway, and it was really not the right thing, and I wish he hadn't done it, but he did, and we lived with it for over 2 decades*. (That's about as long as that run-on sentence, I think.)A few weeks back we finally got around to taking that old closet system apart and installing something we liked better. Yay us! Yay for the annual Elfa sale!
Sadly the old system didn't go quietly into that cold night, or something. Plastic bits broke, metal bits bent, some screws that held shelves together were rusted or corroded into the melamine in odd ways. And, being an aggressive recycler, everything plastic or metal has already been hauled away to help the Gray Bears feed people in need. (I'll bet that donation bought them all of 5% of a banana, or something.)
What I am left with is a bunch of pieces of melamine. You know the stuff: particle board, covered in white plastic. Occasionally ground up by unscrupulous business people in far away countries and included in pet food and baby formula to make it look like there is more protein in there than there really is.**
How much melamine you ask? I'm glad you did. This much:
and:
The small pieces are 16" by about 23", give or take. The large ones are 42" by 16", again, give or take.
As you can see, some are drilled with holes for shelf pins. I think all of the longer pieces are like that on one side. Some of the smaller pieces are also drilled, but some were the shelves, and those are hole free.
This is pretty thin melamine - maybe half an inch or a bit less - so take that into account if you are interested.
To be honest, I have no idea if anyone will want this stuff. I hope so, but if not I will haul it off to the dump one of these days, which I kind of hate to do. But it cannot be recycled by any craft that we, here, possess. It must be taken into Mordor and cast into the very fires of Mt. Doom, where it was forged. I, must do this***, unless one of you has something you can do with it that is more ecologically sound than stuffing it into the landfill.
I must stress that it is not suitable for use as closet shelving again... all of the bits that made it work that way are gone and at least one piece is dinged up on an edge where a screw was firmly stuck in the particle board while disassembly was attempted. You'll want to use this for some other project.
So... if interested, feel free to let me know. Somehow I doubt I'll get any takers, but I can hope.
I am on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Road, and will deliver to reasonably close locations if desired. Most anyone that would respond to this email is closer than the landfill anyway, so it's a win.
--jeffp
* Don't ask why electricity and running water weren't invented just 2 decades ago. I'm making this up.
** Yes, I know, those unscrupulous businessmen only grind up the plastic bits and not the particle board****. But you'd think the latter would add fiber, right, so it would be good too? And anyway... didn't you read the first footnote? I am making all of this up.
*** If you represent the Tolkien estate, please don't sue me. Also, if you work for or with Peter Jackson or the companies that created the Lord of the Rings movies, please don't sue me either.
**** Yes, I know, they actually use the liquid version in pet and baby food, before it's been applied to the particle board at all. So sue me. Unless you're associated with the Tolkien estate, Peter Jackson, or related parties. See footnote immediately above.
***** My there are a lot of footnotes here.
Monday, January 6, 2014
A Suggestion Regarding Costco and Food Sampling Stations
Have I mentioned I hate shopping? Have I mentioned that I really hate the modern, American way of shopping?
Yeah... thought so. Regardless, after today's adventure I propose the following:
You might suggest that would kill off food sampling in Costco stores. Yes. Yes it would. And I would be thrilled were that to happen.
You might wonder what would be done with the money collected, if anyone continued running tasting stations. I honestly don't care. Realistically it should probably be used to fund anti-obesity campaigns, but you could put it all in a big pile and burn it as far as I am concerned.
Anything to stop the abomination that is food tasting at mega stores. There's no way to get around or through the congestion, and I always come out of there feeling lucky some other customer hasn't gone postal as a result of the insanity.
Am I going too far with this?
Yeah... thought so. Regardless, after today's adventure I propose the following:
- Charge Costco (and other, substantially similar businesses) for each and every food tasting station they open within 10 feet of any intersecting aisles, and for each food tasting station they open in the middle of an aisle that is less than 50 feet wide. I propose a fee of $1000 per hour of operation, levied against each and every food tasting station in violation of either of those rules.
- Charge each person at least $1 per sample they take from any and all such stations. I am open to charging $5 or $10 per sample, though. Exact change required. Bills only; no coins.
You might suggest that would kill off food sampling in Costco stores. Yes. Yes it would. And I would be thrilled were that to happen.
You might wonder what would be done with the money collected, if anyone continued running tasting stations. I honestly don't care. Realistically it should probably be used to fund anti-obesity campaigns, but you could put it all in a big pile and burn it as far as I am concerned.
Anything to stop the abomination that is food tasting at mega stores. There's no way to get around or through the congestion, and I always come out of there feeling lucky some other customer hasn't gone postal as a result of the insanity.
Am I going too far with this?
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Linux Rant IV
These posts are starting to need better names. Maybe something like:
Linux Rant IV - Revenge of Gnome-Shell
So that went well. Not.
Debian 7.3.0 installed cleanly and booted. It looked great. But when I logged into Gnome, it was just as slow as anything Ubuntu did. Crawling. Awful. Unusable.
Diligent digging - aka, bringing up the system monitor and looking at what processes were eating CPU time - showed the culprit is named gnome-shell.
Some googling leads me to wonder if I didn't trip over a known problem in Gnome. Perhaps something in this thread about an llvmpipe being a problem is related. I have no clue.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=285415
In any case, Debian 7.3.0 running Gnome is just as useless on my laptop as Ubuntu running Gnome. And that makes me worry about (eventually) installing anything running Gnome on my desktop machine.
I am starting to wonder if I will ever get something to run on these laptops without significant pain. And it turns out that my wife's laptop has an ATI graphics chip in it, not an nvidia, so all this work on my laptop might not lead to a solution for hers.
I am just thrilled with all of this. Thrilled I say.
Going to have to discuss options with the wife. It may be time to throw in the towel and get new laptops. These were purchased in Feb of 2004. Yes, really. They are almost 10 years old. We could probably spend $400 each and get something much faster. Ben was telling me to do this the other day, and while I hate to admit it, he might have a point. Gotta think it through.
Such fun. Hopefully this is the last Linux Rant for a while. At least until George Lucas and/or Disney get their grubby hands on the rights to them. The sequels will probably be really painful.
Linux Rant IV - Revenge of Gnome-Shell
So that went well. Not.
Debian 7.3.0 installed cleanly and booted. It looked great. But when I logged into Gnome, it was just as slow as anything Ubuntu did. Crawling. Awful. Unusable.
Diligent digging - aka, bringing up the system monitor and looking at what processes were eating CPU time - showed the culprit is named gnome-shell.
Some googling leads me to wonder if I didn't trip over a known problem in Gnome. Perhaps something in this thread about an llvmpipe being a problem is related. I have no clue.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=285415
In any case, Debian 7.3.0 running Gnome is just as useless on my laptop as Ubuntu running Gnome. And that makes me worry about (eventually) installing anything running Gnome on my desktop machine.
I am starting to wonder if I will ever get something to run on these laptops without significant pain. And it turns out that my wife's laptop has an ATI graphics chip in it, not an nvidia, so all this work on my laptop might not lead to a solution for hers.
I am just thrilled with all of this. Thrilled I say.
Going to have to discuss options with the wife. It may be time to throw in the towel and get new laptops. These were purchased in Feb of 2004. Yes, really. They are almost 10 years old. We could probably spend $400 each and get something much faster. Ben was telling me to do this the other day, and while I hate to admit it, he might have a point. Gotta think it through.
Such fun. Hopefully this is the last Linux Rant for a while. At least until George Lucas and/or Disney get their grubby hands on the rights to them. The sequels will probably be really painful.
Linux Rant III
The story so far:
Desperate to find a linux distribution that runs well on ancient Pentium M chips, our hero has done some awful things with Ubuntu, installing 10.04, then upgrading to 12.04, but at that point the display driver stopped working, and he got sick of it. We pick up with the action there...
With the help of my friend Ben, I was lead to the magic of Ctrl-Alt-F2, which brings up a text login screen (aka a tty) so I could login to the running Ubuntu system, even as the GUI was running and completely unusable.
Some poking around - again aided by Ben - revealed that the laptop has an nvidia graphics chip, and that it was running an open source driver. That driver - I know from past experience - is bad news and doesn't support at least some older nvidia chips, including mine. So I googled around and figured out how to install the proprietary driver from nvidia, which does know how to work with my machine. Installed it. Rebooted.
Change 1: now the system comes up with a little tiny graphics window as it boots, instead of using the full screen. Odd, but I don't care because... I can login and the graphics work again. Well, sort of...
As with the boot side of things, I wound up operating in a little, tiny screen - 1024x768 out of a much larger monitor capable of supporting much higher resolutions. Odd, but at least I can login and work within Linux now without going over to a tty.
Dig into system settings and found the proprietary driver tool, in which I learn that the nvidia driver, while apparently installed, hasn't been activated yet. OK. Activate it. And wait while it downloads and installs the driver again. Huh? But never mind that because once it completes it tells me that the driver is now activated. All I have to do is reboot, which I do, and...
Success. Amazing. The login screen is still really tiny for unknown reasons, but after logging in I get a full sized, max resolution screen. Ubuntu 12.04 is actually running on my laptop.
But that isn't all I wanted to do, sadly. I want to get rid of Unity, a user interface that I continue to dislike. Back to Google and there are some simple steps I find to install Gnome. It will be a choice at login time, apparently, which UI runs. So off to the software center to get and install Gnome. Done. Reboot.
And the screen clears... and there is a looooong pause. Minutes. Then a menu bar appears at the top of the screen. Is it done loading? I don't know. I have never used Gnome 3, and don't know how it is used. Move the mouse to one of the icons in the upper right and click. Nothing happens. Try right click. Nothing happens. Hmmm. Odd. Maybe this menu looking thing on the left? Again, nothing. Maybe it's stuck?
Force a reboot.
Login again, but this time to "Gnome Classic". And wait a loooooong time again. When it finally appears at least it looks something like the UI that Ubuntu was using before Unity. Good. But it's also unresponsive.
Force a reboot. Try "Gnome Classic" again. This time be more patient. Mouse to menu, click, and wait. Oh... look! Eventually the menu appears. Well... that indicates there is a real performance problem. Start the system monitor and wait for it to come up.
Over to the other computer. Google something like "compiz using too much cpu". Lots of complaints, various proposed solutions. Try a couple of them, including installing magic software to muck with compiz internals and speed it up. (From the tty, of course, where things run reasonably quickly.)
Reboot, again. Login to Unity this time. The usual UI, quick and fine. OK. Logout, login to one of the Gnome choices. Still slow. Worse than molasses in January. Not good.
Give up. This sucks. Apparently Ubuntu has decided that my hardware isn't worth supporting, that Gnome is an afterthought on 12.04, that Unity rules all, and that anyone who feels differently deserves nothing.
Back to the other computer, back to debian.org. Download the network installer CD ISO image for 7.3.0. Burn it to a CD.
Take the rest of the night off. This has been crazy, and I am far better off doing something fun than making my forehead bleed - more! - on this project.
Saturday morning. Try again. Insert Debian CD into laptop and boot. Select graphical install. Answer the questions. All but one is simple. (I have no clue what answer to give it for my domain name, so I left it blank. Life goes on.)
As I type this the system has already repartitioned and reformatted the disk, and has just finished downloading over 1300 package files to install them.
What happens next? I have no clue, but I do know that Debian booted on my ancient system just fine, so that seems good. Once the install finishes I will poke around and see where things are at. While that goes on, I think I will go have some lunch.
Desperate to find a linux distribution that runs well on ancient Pentium M chips, our hero has done some awful things with Ubuntu, installing 10.04, then upgrading to 12.04, but at that point the display driver stopped working, and he got sick of it. We pick up with the action there...
With the help of my friend Ben, I was lead to the magic of Ctrl-Alt-F2, which brings up a text login screen (aka a tty) so I could login to the running Ubuntu system, even as the GUI was running and completely unusable.
Some poking around - again aided by Ben - revealed that the laptop has an nvidia graphics chip, and that it was running an open source driver. That driver - I know from past experience - is bad news and doesn't support at least some older nvidia chips, including mine. So I googled around and figured out how to install the proprietary driver from nvidia, which does know how to work with my machine. Installed it. Rebooted.
Change 1: now the system comes up with a little tiny graphics window as it boots, instead of using the full screen. Odd, but I don't care because... I can login and the graphics work again. Well, sort of...
As with the boot side of things, I wound up operating in a little, tiny screen - 1024x768 out of a much larger monitor capable of supporting much higher resolutions. Odd, but at least I can login and work within Linux now without going over to a tty.
Dig into system settings and found the proprietary driver tool, in which I learn that the nvidia driver, while apparently installed, hasn't been activated yet. OK. Activate it. And wait while it downloads and installs the driver again. Huh? But never mind that because once it completes it tells me that the driver is now activated. All I have to do is reboot, which I do, and...
Success. Amazing. The login screen is still really tiny for unknown reasons, but after logging in I get a full sized, max resolution screen. Ubuntu 12.04 is actually running on my laptop.
But that isn't all I wanted to do, sadly. I want to get rid of Unity, a user interface that I continue to dislike. Back to Google and there are some simple steps I find to install Gnome. It will be a choice at login time, apparently, which UI runs. So off to the software center to get and install Gnome. Done. Reboot.
Aside: has anyone else noted that I am rebooting an awful lot? It's like working on bloody Windows. But I digress...The system comes back up and I select Gnome. Actually, Gnome 3, I think, as it isn't obvious. The choices are "Gnome", "Gnome Classic", and "Gnome Classic (no effects)". You tell me.
And the screen clears... and there is a looooong pause. Minutes. Then a menu bar appears at the top of the screen. Is it done loading? I don't know. I have never used Gnome 3, and don't know how it is used. Move the mouse to one of the icons in the upper right and click. Nothing happens. Try right click. Nothing happens. Hmmm. Odd. Maybe this menu looking thing on the left? Again, nothing. Maybe it's stuck?
Force a reboot.
Login again, but this time to "Gnome Classic". And wait a loooooong time again. When it finally appears at least it looks something like the UI that Ubuntu was using before Unity. Good. But it's also unresponsive.
Force a reboot. Try "Gnome Classic" again. This time be more patient. Mouse to menu, click, and wait. Oh... look! Eventually the menu appears. Well... that indicates there is a real performance problem. Start the system monitor and wait for it to come up.
Aside: yes, I am an idiot. Should have done ctrl-alt-F2 again and used top. Instead I waited forever for the system monitor to come up.
In the end I learned the CUP was 100% busy, and eventually learned that something called compiz was the culprit.
Over to the other computer. Google something like "compiz using too much cpu". Lots of complaints, various proposed solutions. Try a couple of them, including installing magic software to muck with compiz internals and speed it up. (From the tty, of course, where things run reasonably quickly.)
Reboot, again. Login to Unity this time. The usual UI, quick and fine. OK. Logout, login to one of the Gnome choices. Still slow. Worse than molasses in January. Not good.
Give up. This sucks. Apparently Ubuntu has decided that my hardware isn't worth supporting, that Gnome is an afterthought on 12.04, that Unity rules all, and that anyone who feels differently deserves nothing.
Back to the other computer, back to debian.org. Download the network installer CD ISO image for 7.3.0. Burn it to a CD.
Take the rest of the night off. This has been crazy, and I am far better off doing something fun than making my forehead bleed - more! - on this project.
Saturday morning. Try again. Insert Debian CD into laptop and boot. Select graphical install. Answer the questions. All but one is simple. (I have no clue what answer to give it for my domain name, so I left it blank. Life goes on.)
As I type this the system has already repartitioned and reformatted the disk, and has just finished downloading over 1300 package files to install them.
What happens next? I have no clue, but I do know that Debian booted on my ancient system just fine, so that seems good. Once the install finishes I will poke around and see where things are at. While that goes on, I think I will go have some lunch.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Linux Rant II
As per a comment I left in G+ to my previous post, I started the ugly update process to try and get my laptop running something usable.
First, I installed Ubuntu 10.04. It seemed to work. Rebooted fine, and let me log in. All seemed good.
Then I brought up the update tool and it told me there was a new LTS release - 12.04 - available to upgrade to. Perfect. So I told it to do that. And I waited.
An hour or two later I found it waiting for input to go ahead and replace certain libraries (I think) that it needed to do before it could actually process the update. Fine. I allowed that.
Came back a couple of hours after that to find 2 dialog boxes on the screen. The one in the back was fine, and just told me that the machine needed to be rebooted, which I expected would be the case. The one in front, though, was completely illegible. There were things that were obviously supposed to be characters in it, but they were rectangular boxes instead. A row of them that was obviously supposed to be some sort of status or error message, but it was completely unreadable. There was, however, an obvious button with just 2 such boxes in it, which probably meant "OK", so I clicked on that and the dialog disappeared. Odd, but whatever.
Then I clicked on the reboot dialog. And it rebooted. Success, right?
Well, no. Not quite. First it tried to shut down and hung during the process. Fine. Power off, then power back up.
It booted, and got me to the login screen. That's good. Entered my password and...
Gibberish. A screen full of junk that look mostly like random memory instead of whatever it is supposed to display. No ability to read anything, execute any commands, nothing.
Power off, power on. Try again. Same result.
Theory: Ubuntu has switched to some half baked open source driver for the graphics chip maker in my laptop, and that driver doesn't know how to fully support the ancient chip in my ancient machine. If I want to make this work I may have to figure out how to install the proper proprietary driver on the silly thing, but that may well require getting it to bloody work in the first place. Maybe I can boot into some safe mode and poke around. I don't even remember which graphics card is used in that laptop. Gah!
But it was late, so I gave up and went to bed. I may fiddle with this again this afternoon. It'll be about as much fun as getting a root canal, I'm sure, but I'll see what I can do.
Such fun. I might even post a video of my Ubuntu boot experience, but that would mean figuring out YouTube, and that would probably be just as fraught with errors and issues.
Ben says I should check out Debian. Maybe I will do that. And maybe Arch. All I want is something that bloody works.
First, I installed Ubuntu 10.04. It seemed to work. Rebooted fine, and let me log in. All seemed good.
Then I brought up the update tool and it told me there was a new LTS release - 12.04 - available to upgrade to. Perfect. So I told it to do that. And I waited.
An hour or two later I found it waiting for input to go ahead and replace certain libraries (I think) that it needed to do before it could actually process the update. Fine. I allowed that.
Came back a couple of hours after that to find 2 dialog boxes on the screen. The one in the back was fine, and just told me that the machine needed to be rebooted, which I expected would be the case. The one in front, though, was completely illegible. There were things that were obviously supposed to be characters in it, but they were rectangular boxes instead. A row of them that was obviously supposed to be some sort of status or error message, but it was completely unreadable. There was, however, an obvious button with just 2 such boxes in it, which probably meant "OK", so I clicked on that and the dialog disappeared. Odd, but whatever.
Then I clicked on the reboot dialog. And it rebooted. Success, right?
Well, no. Not quite. First it tried to shut down and hung during the process. Fine. Power off, then power back up.
It booted, and got me to the login screen. That's good. Entered my password and...
Gibberish. A screen full of junk that look mostly like random memory instead of whatever it is supposed to display. No ability to read anything, execute any commands, nothing.
Power off, power on. Try again. Same result.
Theory: Ubuntu has switched to some half baked open source driver for the graphics chip maker in my laptop, and that driver doesn't know how to fully support the ancient chip in my ancient machine. If I want to make this work I may have to figure out how to install the proper proprietary driver on the silly thing, but that may well require getting it to bloody work in the first place. Maybe I can boot into some safe mode and poke around. I don't even remember which graphics card is used in that laptop. Gah!
But it was late, so I gave up and went to bed. I may fiddle with this again this afternoon. It'll be about as much fun as getting a root canal, I'm sure, but I'll see what I can do.
Such fun. I might even post a video of my Ubuntu boot experience, but that would mean figuring out YouTube, and that would probably be just as fraught with errors and issues.
Ben says I should check out Debian. Maybe I will do that. And maybe Arch. All I want is something that bloody works.
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