Alter Ego

My desktop is dying...

2008-07-10T23:13:00.004+08:00

THIS IS CRAP!

My desktop is practically dying on me. The network port on the motherboard is dead, I have to resort to using an NIC card. My graphic card is dying, I am seeing artifacts all over the place. I won't be able to sell it anymore. Damn it, I should have sold it last year and be happy with a DX10 card. So much for DX10 and Windows Vista bashing.

I think I find little use for desktops anymore. I would love to stick to laptops and focus more on mobility.

That's right, maybe no more gaming for me. I am getting old. I don't even find gaming as fun as it used to be anymore.

Sorry, friends, the next time you need someone to play Company of Heroes with you guys, you will have to look for someone else. I don't do games anymore. It's all reality to me now.

But wait...

Isn't Diablo 3 coming?

... and then there's the new Radeon cards called the 4850 and 4870!

Ahh, what to do??!! I can't decide!

Gateway IP in Ubuntu? (or Linux)

2008-07-07T14:25:00.002+08:00

Well, in Windows you usually do this:

ipconfig /all

They call it the ipconfig command, but in truth, you can never config-ure anything with that command. In Ubuntu, or any other Linux distro in particular, you simply do this to get your gateway IP.

netstat -r | grep default

or you can also do...

ip neigh

The latter is a lot faster though.

Useful when someone needs to configure their IP statically/manually.

Sorry for the downtime

2008-06-10T12:29:00.000+08:00

Somehow I totally forgot to renew my domain :P So unprofessional of me, but I don't earn anything anyway. Those ads are just for show ;P

Thank you to Hive for the quick response in renewing my domain.

RM2.70/litre for Petrol

2008-06-05T14:46:00.000+08:00

Bloody hell.

Great.

I can barely support myself with my current earning, and now the fuel price just happened out of nowhere (thank you for my vast interest in PC hardware and self entertainment). The government said the fuel price hike would happen in August, but I was dead surprise when it actually happen today!

I was shocked to see the queue at every petrol stations while driving home from work! I knew people will start queuing before midnight, but not this bad! The peaceful Bukit Jelutong was infested with vehicles queuing up at the ONLY Petronas petrol station. I was thinking of queuing up too, but the queue was too long that I just gave up and went home.

This morning, I drove 80km/h to work. I usually do 140-150km/h; not that I was trying to be quick because I was late, but I love the speed. The highway seems slow today. I was amazed to see a Subaru Impreza cruising at 110km/h. Maybe he's worried too.

I came up with a few ways to curb my spending regarding fuel.

1. Use a fuel efficient vehicle. If you have the license, use a motorcycle when the weather permits. I drive a Proton Savvy, thank goodness. A vehicle with displacement of 1.0L to 1.5L is a sweet spot for fuel efficiency.
2. If you drive a car with manual transmission, shift gear somewhere between 3000-3500rpm. I found this a few years ago to be very economical.
3. Throw away excess luggage from your car. Anything that don't belong should go. Heavy car equates to more fuel.
4. Be patient. Go slow, like 80km/h-110km/h; in 5th gear, not 3rd or 4th.
5. Use the air cond only when its really HOT. Wind down your windows when the weather permits.
6. Eat in instead of going out.
7. Stay home on weekends.
8. No more Starbucks, Coffee Beans, or any luxury.
9. Use less toothpaste and shampoo.
10. Eat less, and exercise more (like a breeze walk to the 7-Eleven near your house).
11. Shutdown the PC when not in use. Use laptop.
12. Less air cond at home.
13. Only shower twice a day. Not more. Seems impossible with the Malaysian climate.

.............................

Ah fuck it! No way I am letting this change my life!

Important Security Advisory

2008-05-14T17:31:00.003+08:00

There's been a security vulnerability in Ubuntu Linux namely versions 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04 LTS. For more information, read here.

Here, are steps that you can take to prevent your machine from being exploited.

How to send EXE file via GMail?

2008-05-13T16:00:00.002+08:00

I tried many ways, including archiving the file into different formats, namely .zip, .gzip, .tar.gzip; but none worked. GMail is just too clever!

Thank you to Marjan. The only way is to actually rename the exe file to txt and then attach it to your email. Like so:

mv pscp.exe pscp.txt

Tada! Not so clever now ehhh??

Desktop 64 is DOWN!

2008-05-08T21:48:00.004+08:00

Level 1 is the brand I trust when it comes to a wireless router. Reason is; its cheap and it works. When my first Level 1 router got struck by lightning, I simply bought another one; the exact same one. And that one too got struck by lightning, crap.

Now I am running on a backup router supplied by my brother. Not sure how long I can use this one though.

And to make it worse, my trusty Ubuntu 64-bit desktop is down. Apparently, the network port is FUBAR-ed by the lightning somehow. The device can still be detected in Ubuntu. I am going to try to install a PCI network card. Actually, I did try last night, but it didn't work out as well as I thought. Ubuntu just refused to cooperate. Since I will be gone until Saturday before I can start working on it again, my Ubuntu 64 will just have to wait for me until then.

Man, just when I was thinking of getting a 500GB HDD, and then this happened.

... and I am back on Facebook!

2008-05-01T20:52:00.003+08:00

After pondering for quite a while about getting back on Facebook, I decided to do it anyway. Reason is quite simple; to keep in touch with friends. And believe it or not, my friends nowadays no longer use Fotopages (tonnes of ads; idiots) or Flickr (very very nice) to share pictures. They use Facebook, seriously (except for my photographer friends, most of them still use Flickr; understandable).

Sooooooo... yea, I am back. Yes, Michelle, I am back on Facebook. You win.

BUT I AM NOT PLAYING ANY OF THOSE GAMES! PERIOD!

VLC with Pulseaudio on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-04-26T13:00:00.002+08:00

With the coming of Ubuntu 8.04 (or Hardy Heron), with it comes Pulseaudio. If you have noticed, if you use VLC to play your videos, you will notice that you cannot play more than 1 video at any 1 time. The second video of your playback (while having the first one still running in the background) will not have any sound.

So, what gives?

Well, you need the Pulseaudio plugin for the VLC. To install it...

sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-pulse

Now that the plugin is installed, you need to set the VLC audio preference to use the new plugin.

Launch VLC Media Player by going to Applications > Sound & Video > VLC Media Player.

Go to Settings > Preferences.

Under Audio, click on the Output Modules submenu, and then click on Advanced Options checkbox at the bottom of the screen.

Now, choose Pulseaudio audio output from the list box for the Audio Output Module. Click on Save.

VLC Media Player should now play nicely with Pulseaudio. This should work for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu 8.04.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Released!

2008-04-24T22:13:00.004+08:00

Today is April 24th, 2008, and the second LTS of Ubuntu has been released! I am not that excited though since I have been using it for quite some time now. There's still a few issues (I think) with Pulse Audio, but the developers are hard at work to get it fix; so no worries peeps.

Look what I found on Ubuntu.com...

I guess everyone is upgrading!

The easiest way to upgrade from Gutsy is to open up a terminal, and then (make sure your Gutsy is fully updated first yea)

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
update-manager -d

... and then you are off. Do it before you go to sleep, the upgrade will surely take a while.

I am now on Skype! (Ubuntu of course)

2008-04-20T18:16:00.003+08:00

And to think that my life couldn't get any better, man I was dead wrong.

I have been looking for a way to get webcam to work; and I want it to be as painless as possible. No installation of weird drivers or running any weird scripts, I wanted things to be as smooth and as painless as possible.

I just got a tip from someone that Skype works like a charm. So I went off to Skype's website and download it. I chose the Linux version for Ubuntu 7.04+ (I am currently on Ubuntu Hardy Heron Release Candidate).

I am trying to install it on a 64-bit but the application is 32-bit, so you gotta do a --force-architecture to get it to install flawlessly. So this is exactly how I did it.

1. Browse to where you downloaded the DEB file.
2. If you are on 32-bit Ubuntu, no problem then, just double click the DEB file and Ubuntu will awesomely resolve the dependencies for you and download the necessary packages. You are done, so go have fun.
3. For 64-bit users, we need to put in a little bit of effort, just a little. Its painless. First, install these 2 dependencies.

sudo apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-gui

4. Once that is done, do this to install.

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture skype-debian_2.0.0.68-1_i386.deb

... or whatever your DEB filename is.

That's it! Make sure that your webcam is already connected, log in and check out the Options, go to Video Devices, and Click on the Test button, and.... TADA!

Ubuntu, I am loving it. Do add me! Please add an introduction message so that I know who you are. ID is teslarage ;)

Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 Acting Strange

2008-04-16T20:51:00.001+08:00

I have just finished doing some troubleshooting on my Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 on Ubuntu Hardy Heron Beta (talk about Betas, I really love to be on the bleeding edge (read: love looking for trouble by using unstable software) ). Anyway, that's the fun I get for being a geek, thank you very much.

So, there I was sitting in front of my desktop wondering what the hell is going on with my Firefox.

First thing I realize, my bookmarks are gone. That's not good. I love my bookmarks.

Second, the Google search box ain't working. You input some random words and press Enter and nothing happens. This is terrible, I love Firefox because of that search box.

I went through every single folder in ~/.mozilla and still couldn't find anything wrong. I even did a chmod 777 * and still things remained the same.

Hmm.

Okay, let's go safe mode.

firefox -safe-mode

Still nothing works!!

*&@(#^&@#%^*)&@^#%)&*#@*%@#$

Out of nowhere I simply typed in

df -h

And as expected, Ubuntu would display my current hdd space and guess what...

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 21G 21G 0M 100% /

Doh! I used up everything! I went through some stuffs and deleted some videos I downloaded off the net, did a

killall firefox

and then

firefox

and tada! My Firefox is back with its full glory; bookmarks and search engine all working again.

Now I know that Firefox needs some hdd space to run properly! :D

Lesson of the day: Get that WD 500GB SATA 16MB hard disk. Yes, go get them. Get 2 of them. Then I can join that Terabyte Club. And oh, bragging rights.

Bombardment from Facebook (FB)

2008-04-10T09:46:00.005+08:00

Ever since I announced that I won't be signing in to FB, ever, my friends have been trying to coax me into FB. How? By causing FB to send tonnes of emails regarding updates on my applications (read: stupid, brainless applications).

I don't mind, because I have my GMail filter up and all emails from Facebook are sorted out nicely in my Facebook folder. I rarely look it up anyway, but was surprised to see 100 unread emails from FB only.

Friends, you can stop now; don't worry, I am still contactable via GTalk and this blog. Yes, Michelle, this post goes out to you in particular :P

Removing those extra kernels in Ubuntu

2008-04-08T17:54:00.002+08:00

There are times when you need to remove extra kernels from your Ubuntu installation. For instance, when you are a beta tester of the upcoming Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Every time there is a kernel update, the previous kernel is kept as a fallback for you should you run into any showstopper bug while using the new kernel. If you are like me, you will end up with these bunch of kernels:

teslarage@PONSB-COE-DEV:~$ ls /boot/
abi-2.6.22-14-generic initrd.img-2.6.24-15-generic
abi-2.6.24-12-generic initrd.img-2.6.24-15-generic.bak
abi-2.6.24-15-generic memtest86+.bin
config-2.6.22-14-generic memtest86+.bin.backup
config-2.6.24-12-generic System.map-2.6.22-14-generic
config-2.6.24-15-generic System.map-2.6.24-12-generic
grub System.map-2.6.24-15-generic
initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic
initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic.bak vmlinuz-2.6.24-12-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic vmlinuz-2.6.24-15-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic.bak

That is just too much, isn't it? So how do you delete them? I wouldn't recommend doing an 'rm' command here as that would screw up other things in Ubuntu. What you should do is:

sudo apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.22-14-generic

When you check your /boot again, you will notice that the kernel you want to remove is gone:

teslarage@PONSB-COE-DEV:~$ ls /boot
abi-2.6.24-12-generic initrd.img-2.6.24-15-generic.bak
abi-2.6.24-15-generic memtest86+.bin
config-2.6.24-12-generic memtest86+.bin.backup
config-2.6.24-15-generic System.map-2.6.24-12-generic
grub System.map-2.6.24-15-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic vmlinuz-2.6.24-12-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-12-generic.bak vmlinuz-2.6.24-15-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-15-generic

So, that's how you do it, just like removing a package in Ubuntu :)

If you need to check what other kernels you have installed, do this:

dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image-2.6.2

And that is how you manage your kernels in Ubuntu :)

Getting Projectors to Work in Ubuntu

2008-04-05T21:04:00.002+08:00

Believe it or not, I suck at X configurations. I really do. I don't have the time to study more about X so I took the easy way out.

1. Connect the projector to your laptop.

2. Do this in command line.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

3. Just press Enter through every screen.

4. Restart X for the changes to take effect by pressing CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE.

5. Log in again as you always do.

6. And finally, the projector will automagically display your Ubuntu desktop and you can show off your desktop effects to your co-workers.

Okay, I am off for a quick shower.

What I have done... and next...

2008-04-01T22:21:00.003+08:00

This is just a small update post as to what you can expect from me in the next 1 week.

I have just upgraded my laptop from Gutsy to Hardy. Everything went smooth and everything is working as it was intended to be. Yes, a happy Ubuntu Hardy Heron user here :) Of course, I will update how I did it and what sort of problems I got into. Nothing big, really. I cannot think how simpler a Linux can be.

Next up, is the Avant Windows Manager on Hardy 32-bit. I have not tried it with 64-bit, so maybe I will do that later this week :) Anyhow, yes, you can expect an AWN post within this week hopefully. Windows user, beware! Your eyes might be popping out seeing all these flashy stuffs. I might need to hangout at Starbucks again just so that I can blog properly. Talk about time, lately I just don't have enough that. Thank you to PSP gaming.

That's it! Hopefully more time tomorrow to blog properly...

Don't go to GSC website!

2008-03-30T22:19:00.004+08:00

Update (31/03/2008; 7:50PM GMT+8): And the exploit is gone. So its safe now.

I just read the latest news from Lowyat.Net, and found out that the official website of Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) of Malaysia, has been hacked. Apparently it is using some sort of malicious javascript that allow it to be installed to steal passwords. Err, does that make any sense? Here is an excerpt from SANS website:

Over 10,000 legitimate websites have been compromised and now have a javascript link that will direct visitors to a malicious website hosted on 2117966.net. The malicious website attempts to exploit the vulnerability described in MS06-014 MS07-004, MS06-067, MS06-057and a number of ActiveX vulnerabilities.

Successful exploitation result in the installation of a password-stealing malicious program that attempts to steal the logon credentials from websites and online games.

Apparently this will only work on Internet Explorer (ActiveX anyone?). So, if you are using Firefox, you have nothing to worry about. In fact, I tried to load that website, and Firefox gracefully told me that the website is not safe.

If you are running Windows (but most of this blog's visitors are using Linux of some flavor; good for you!), you might want to update your antivirus definitions, and start scanning!

Qemu on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

2008-03-26T22:37:00.001+08:00

On 64-bit, when trying to use Qemu with KQemu (Qemu accelerator - you will want this), instead of using:

qemu -boot d -hda img.img -cdrom fedora.iso -kernel-kqemu

... do this and you should be able to get Full Acceleration with KQemu.

qemu-system-x86_64 -boot d -hda img.img -cdrom fedora.iso -kernel-kqemu

I have highlighted the difference in bold.

Because of this, qemu-launcher is utterly useless; as when you click on the Launch button, it will actually use qemu instead of qemu-system-x86_64; which will not work with the option -kernel-kqemu. If you are on 32-bit, then any part of this post shouldn't be a problem for you.

For more info on getting Qemu and KQemu to work with your Ubuntu, please refer to here. This was how I got Windows XP Pro up and running on top of Ubuntu :)

I hate Facebook

2008-03-25T22:22:00.002+08:00

I don't care if it's the 'in thing' among my friends now, I am totally starting to hate it.

It's full of garbage.

It's full of stupid, brainless and mindless games.

It's full of crap applications. Why bother? There's already tonnes of great applications via apt-cache search application_name.

So, from now on, I am declaring today as my first starting day of not logging into Facebook. And I will not log in there anymore, ever again.

There I've said it. No, I cannot say why, let's just say that I am very emotional while writing this. Anger, hate, jealousy, unfairness, stupidity; I am feeling all these at the same time.

So, let the counter start.

No of days not logged on to Facebook: 1

New labels

2008-03-16T12:06:00.004+08:00

I have just added a new label so that you can differentiate the post if its for Ubuntu 32-bit or 64-bit. For the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, the label will remain as 'Ubuntu'. If its related to Ubuntu 64-bit, I will label the post as Ubuntu AND 64-bit.

A little confusing at first, but its the best way I can think of as to not do any relabelling for previous posts :)

Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 6 (Hardy Heron)

2008-03-15T20:17:00.006+08:00

I've just installed the latest Alpha version of the next and upcoming Ubuntu. So far everything is working fine. Firefox 3 Beta 4 is awesome; web surfing is so much faster, and it runs on less memory (making my 4GB worth of memory seems... worthless :P)

I managed to install Flash and got it working via apt. So from now on, I guess I will be posting more howtos on this version of Ubuntu soon. Meanwhile, check out the screen shot; if you want to see more, please tell me :D

Btw, I installed the 64-bit version since I am on my desktop running on an Intel E2160. Here is my desktop specs, just in case you are interested to see what hardware I am using this Alpha on.

Motherboard: Gigabyte EP35-DS3
Processor: Intel E2160 1.8GHz (overclocked to 3.2GHz)
HDD: A very old 40GB PATA HDD
Graphics: XFX 7900GT VIVO Edition

Limewire for Ubuntu Gutsy

2008-03-12T19:31:00.001+08:00

I actually wrote this post quite some time ago, but totally forgot about it! So go on...

LimeWire is a p2p program that is Java based, if I am not mistaken. We are fortunate to have a Linux version of this excellent software. It's not available on any repositories that I have came across, so you will have to download the deb package.

Go here and start downloading. Choose the basic package (which is FREE) and admit that you will never use it for copyright infringement :P Get the Linux version of the software for Ubuntu. As of today, the file name is LimeWireLinux.deb.

So to install a DEB package, you do this:

sudo dpkg -i LimeWireLinux.deb

It shouldn't take long. Once its done, you can launch the program located at

Applications > Internet > LimeWire

If you feel like you hate it, you can always do this to totally remove it; no traces left. One of the reasons why I started using Ubuntu again was because of this :D

sudo dpkg -P limewire-basic

-P means purge.

Have fun!

Firefox 3 Beta 3 on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

2008-03-06T20:21:00.004+08:00

Update: Beta 4 is out and it works better for me. So I am going to give this Beta 4 a little spin :)

A reading a few reviews on Firefox 3 Beta, I decided to give it a little spin and see how it is for myself. So this is how I installed it.

1. Get the Firefox 3 Beta 3 on Mozilla website.
2. Browse to where you downloaded the BZ2 file, and then

tar -xvjf firefox-3.0b3.tar.bz2

3. Move it to /opt. This step is optional but I like to keep things organized.

mv firefox /opt

4. Now, we need to make sure that the plugins work. We'll use plugins from the current installation of Firefox 2.

mv /opt/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins.backup
ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins /opt/firefox/plugins

5. Before we start launching stuffs and break things, let's backup the .mozilla directory first.

mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.backup

6. Create a launcher on your desktop by Right Click on Your Desktop > Create Launcher. Make it look like in this screenshot.

Now you can launch Firefox 3 via the launcher on your desktop :D

So far, I HAVE NO IDEA WHATSOEVER why is it any good! Maybe I have done something wrong; but I think its sluggish, and uses up the CPU time for no reason! It never crashed on me, though. So maybe I should start thinking about getting myself a new laptop :P

Some of my Add Ons don't work anymore, so you might want to check whether your favorite plugins will work on Firefox 3 or not :)

Convert BIN to ISO in Ubuntu

2008-03-01T12:05:00.002+08:00

There is no way to mount BIN files in Ubuntu, but there's a way to convert BIN to ISO. From there, you can mount the ISO and browse your CD image :) Here, I am going to use bchunk.

$ sudo apt-get install bchunk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
bchunk
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 13.7kB of archives.
After unpacking 69.6kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://my.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/universe bchunk 1.2.0-6 [13.7kB]
Fetched 13.7kB in 8s (1681B/s)
Selecting previously deselected package bchunk.
(Reading database ... 96119 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking bchunk (from .../bchunk_1.2.0-6_i386.deb) ...
Setting up bchunk (1.2.0-6) ...
$ bchunk rld-ds2a.bin rld-ds2a.cue rld-ds2a
binchunker for Unix, version 1.2.0 by Heikki Hannikainen
Created with the kind help of Bob Marietta ,
partly based on his Pascal (Delphi) implementation.
Support for MODE2/2352 ISO tracks thanks to input from
Godmar Back , Colas Nahaboo
and Matthew Green .
Released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later (at your option).

Reading the CUE file:

Track 1: MODE1/2352 01 00:00:00

Writing tracks:

1: rld-ds2a.iso01.iso 574/574 MB [********************] 100 %
$

For more info, you can read up the manual via:

man bchunk

Play DVD on Ubuntu Gutsy

2008-02-28T22:15:00.004+08:00

I have been wanting to post this for a while, but I don't know if I should. Over at Ubuntuguide, there is a mention on how to do this. But I eventually found another way - a very simple way to achieve this. I have mentioned before about VLC Media Player, how much I prefer that one compared to Totem. Not to say I hate Totem, it's just that Totem didn't work very well for me.

What you need for DVD playback is actually, VLC! Let's install it.

sudo apt-get install vlc

I know, tonnes of packages, just do it already :P

Launch vlc.

Applications > Sound & Video > VLC Media Player

or if you like CLI

vlc

Make sure that you have already inserted your DVD movie. Now on VLC, go to

File > Open Disc...

Make sure that the Device Name is correct, and then press OK. Tada! Instant DVD playback!