Journal of Tormod Haugen

I can only say; don’t make too many promises. I said I should blog a it more yesterday - but reality has made it so that my only working computer at home is my Aspire One, and the time I had set off for blogging and fixing up a theme download went into a drain marked “fix desktop computer”. Will be back.

Yesterday I installed Skype on my Acer Aspire One. I did it on the Linpus Lite Distro, and it was quick and painless. Everything I had read up until yesterday had prepared me for a difficult and time consuming task. I set at it with grim persistence, though - I needed Skype, and my desktop is crashing every one or two hours now.

With a bit more research it all looked brighter. It seems as if Linpus is built on Fedora (6?), and then I could at least use the rpm (package) from skype.com. There still was a few troubling hints that I had to download it and install with yam - getting every prerequisite package before I could get it installed.

Reality was even easier than I had guessed, and about as easy as I could hope. I located the terminal and changed the root password, fixing a system menu to the right mouse button, as described by Laptop Magazine. After that I downloaded the rpm package from the net - and it opened by default in the package manager. A few ok’s later, and it had installed all dependencies and skype itself.

I’m still planning on getting easy peasy installed on it later, but I guess I’ll wait until I got time, money and inspiration to get more memory, a SD card and a bigger battery pack for it. Then I probably got a < 1.0 kg computer with almost as much processing power as my aging desktop…

Today there were some handing out of new years gifts. First I went and got my children some new jigsaw puzzles, two with a hundred pieces and one with two hundred pieces. Then I also got my sister a I’m sorrypresent; she got a CD with Stevie Ray Vaughan for Christmas - but thought it to be too country-ish. Now she got some Beethoven to relax to. Lastly I got myself a blue Acer Aspire One, it being on sale and me needing a portable browser and notebook. Here’s to productivity, I hope.

As I came home with the loot, my sister dropped by to deliver a book she had borrowed, the charger for my DS and a new woollen hat my mother had knitted me. Now I got my Meathead hat (with pocket and a button) and this new Shedir hat (in the picture: Tesha © 2009 ). Both are probably uncommon enough; according to my mom (and Ravelry) the Shedir is one of just a few like it - world wide.

Or something like that. For once someone told me to look it up on Google. It was a Linux query, and since I’m not that knowledgeable on Linux, I deferred it to my brother. He asked me if he should shuffle me away from the computer, or if I would look it up on Google myself.

My error message was something in the neighbourhood of this (source):

* Starting System Tools Backends system-tools-backends invoke-rc.d: initscript system-tools-backends, action “start” failed.
dpkg: error processing system-tools-backends (–configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
system-tools-backends
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

and the fix is (source):

***TEMPORARY WORKAROUND***
After the upgrade has failed, you will get an error every time you run dpkg or apt-get saying that system-tools-backends is not configured. “sudo dpkg –configure -a” will not fix this. To recover, please perform the following 2 steps:

1) sudo invoke-rc.d system-tools-backends stop
2) sudo dpkg –configure -a

It seems like the problem is with installing while switching users. Now fixed. Yay!

I’ve been doing something that I should have been doing a long time ago. As I haven’t been using my desktop much since my last hard disk crash, it has sported only a Windows XP install. Yesterday I set down to install Ubuntu on it; completing another backup, clearing space and getting the actual iso image written to a CD. Everything went a-OK up to and including the install.

Now, getting on teh intrawebz was a bit harder. After setting the wireless up nicely in the graphical network manager and then turning it on a few times, I suddenly noticed that there was no wireless card installed. Which kind of explained why I didn’t connect to my router. Selecting troubleshooting from the Help prompted me to install ndisgtk from the Synaptic Package Manager. Where I couldn’t find it. Which was fixed by inserting the Ubuntu CD again, and adding it to the package repositories from within the package manager.

Now the troubles began. I was prompted to install a Windows driver ( a *.inf file ) for the card. Checking up what was installed in Windows I found an oem driver - which didn’t work under Ubuntu, probably because it was filled with different values and references to packaged files residing elsewhere and on Windows CD’s. Next I went to the manufacturer’s webpage and downloaded what turned out to be the wrong driver. Which installed, but didn’t find the hardware. Now I dug into Howto documents and man pages. They pointed me in direction of the NDISwrapper compatibility list. Which doesn’t exist any more, and when I dug up a more or less recent version on archive.org it didn’t contain my card.

The fix was easy. I just had to get the correct driver from the manufacturer - or rather from the people who branded the hardware. My card is a Jensen Wireless High Speed USB dongle. Running lsusb yielded:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1435:0210 Wistron NeWeb

for my card. This card can be used through ndiswrapper with the driver downloadable from Jensen Scandinavia.

It is soon 2009, and time keeps rushing by. I’ve already resolved to look forward in small steps, in order to keep from breaking down due to too many promises. To myself and others. In order to get set for this, I’ll try and blog a bit more regularly. Like multiple times a week. Perhaps even every weekday.

Now, forward isn’t the only direction to look in all the time, you should also keep in mind what has gone before. I’ve met up with friends and family this christmas. Not only those that I don’t see too often - but also those that I see all the time. In a shelving section in my parents’ house I found some tapes with games for my old Commodore 64. These gems kept me occupied for a while a long time ago, for example Spitfire and Saboteur II.

Saboteur II was kind of innovative; it contained platform game features - a 700 screen big level with multiple entrances. You played a female ninja - weak, and low on power. Ammo was found as wrenches, ninja stars and other miscellanea. Your best weapon was your brain, learning where to enter the level, noting where you could go safely, and where you needed weapons to enter. Failure meant just that. Try again, armed only with what you learned the last time around.

Now, to be honest, games like that exist today. They sometimes are high profile games too, though that seems to be more and more seldom. One game that reminded me of this style, somehow, was Portal. Not that it is alike, but the way you play a female protagonist. Unarmed and weak, with the power to move around - armed only with what is lying around. Not in boxes, but just the boxes. Learning all the way. Missteps means death - try again, armed with what knowledge you gained the last time around.

I’m not sure how much I like Christmas season. Other than a time of relaxation and reflection. For it works well like that. Sitting down and reflecting. For me this is a bit of how things should be, perhaps. Less stress, if you let it. More family, if you want it. I’ve kind of relaxed on my projects. I still sit here at the computer a bit. Thinking. But it doesn’t count. Does it?

I’m starting anew in a bit. I’m formatting a harddrive for backup purposes. I’ll clean out my computer. Reinstall, refresh, switch it out, perhaps? But formatting a 500 GB disk with NTFS is … slow. I should have thought about it before I stared. But it gives me time to reflect. And write this post.

I sure can use the practice…

This was an interesting week. I’ve been home a couple of days, the ground is covered in what we call Steel Ice in Norway, and I’m breaking neurons on a work related task. Since I also want to get blogging some more, I kind of have to write something now. Or something like that.

Barring a few tiny ideas, I’m fresh out when it comes to blog post inspiration. Which makes Łukasz’ latest post coming like an inspiration. I’ll just say what he does so well: What games are you playing right now?

For me it is a a bit of this, and a bit of that. I’m mostly a PC person, but my computer isn’t built to handle anything that are sold out of bargain bins (err… or about that). I’ve logged quite a few hours the last month playing the Kakuro puzzles in Platinum Sudoku for the DS. I also plowed through Orcs and Elves by Id Software - a decent dungeon hack on the same platform, though it isn’t something I’d buy as a full-price item.

As I said in an earlier post; I’ve also played a bit of Spectromancer, but not more than a bit. I’m not sure I will play it more right now, but that is mostly because I play the actual Magic: the Gathering against living and breathing humans while drinking coffee these (Satur)days.

I also tried out the latest build of Cortex Command yesterday. I’m pleasantly surprised - both with its captivity and genius - and with its ability to run on my aging computer. I’m not sure why (oh, well - I am…), I’m longing for a good game of Worms with friends again.

What do you play?

I’ve had my computer crash a lot on me recently. More and more often, and I finally caved in, pulled it out on the floor and opened it. Two questions hit me:

1. What is the cause of these crashes?
2. Is that a used vacuum cleaner filter, or the fan of my graphics card?

…

Right. At least I hope that was the problem. I guess the next few days will show if it was that or still is a problem. My new card is a big, fanless monster I inherited. It’s better than the one I picked out of the computer. Really looking forward to see if it changes my experience in games.

Beaut of an ATI 9800 pro; it even required a separate power chord.

I really should think about adopting a new box.

Happy New Year!

I am partly installed at my new workplace - which means I’ve got myself a cup of coffee, a temporary computer (due to some unforseen hardware failure), and another cup of coffee. Now I just have to get into the systems, tasks and code here, and evolve to be a productive member of the company.