Category Archives: niimo

Start and home pages

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For the past few years I’ve been using Google Reader as my homepage, since I go there every few hours really frequently. Today though, I’ve decided that I want to change the way I use RSS feeds. Instead of just lumping together all the things I want to read in Google Reader, and then being overwhelmed when there’s a few hundred things  a day, I just want to keep Reader for infrequently updated feeds. More a feed reader (web comics, forum threads I want to keep track of, WordPress trac posts I want to keep track of) than a content reader (TechCrunch, Valleywag, Mashable). For content, I can go to their websites.

I’ve also decided to try out FeedDemon.

That leaves my homepage empty now, and I’ve been thinking of sites to replace Reader. I figured start.io might be a good idea before realising that my bookmarks do that job in a much more organised and quicker way. I actually really don’t like iGoogle, and I’m not sure why. I have a perfectly good search bar with more functionality right up top of my browser.

BBC News is pretty depressing most of the time. I like to be caught up on the news, but death, war, and economic failure isn’t really the pick me up I want to see first thing in the morning. Maybe I’ll go with /r/funny. That’d be new content each time I go there, and it’d make me happy. I’ll go with that for a while.

Debian experience so far

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I switched to Debian four or so days ago, and it’s kinda making me feel stressed. I’m having to put a lot more work into the operating system to just make it work.

Firefox for instance – oh, sorry, Iceweasel – took a lot of Googling and about:configing before it felt the same as it did on Windows. Why some of those keys and things have changed is odd for me. Why has ^J for the download menu suddenly been switched to ^Y? Why use Alt instead of Ctrl for tab manipulation? Why doesn’t clicking the address bar auto-highlight it all? These just seem like weird changes to me.

I’ve installed a few extensions in Songbird. It says they’re installed but there’s no other sign of them. No way to run them. No obvious way to get to the iPod functions which apparently exist…

I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to be installing to get OpenGL to work. I need it to play Eve… (Which is apparently no longer in development…)

Installing things is also a little bit of work… I don’t know why more things don’t come with a set up wizard, like I’m so used to in Windows. Instead, I have to try and remember the switches for untaring things, putting them in the right place. Sometimes just guessing what I should be doing to run the damn thing.

This just isn't nice...

This just isn't nice... It looks like it can't decide on what width to use for letters sometimes. Blatant attempts at adding extra pixels to make it more round.

Fonts are a weird, picky problem for me too. But I think that’s just because I’ve not played around with the defaults enough yet, to find one I actually like. Needs more anti-alias, and better kerning.

On the installation for Debian set up thing, I asked it to install a web server. That may exist, but I’ve no idea where to find it… My PHP pages aren’t giving me any errors, they just don’t seem to be outputting anything at all.

It’s just not new user friendly. I’m hoping that Ubuntu is much better in this domain, since that’s what it’s designed for really. So, I may be switching back to Windows some time soon. I don’t think my life can handle not having it as a primary operating system just yet. In the furutre though, I’ll defintely be installing another Linux OS on my next machine.

I got my laptop back!

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DHL told me that they’d be at my house anywhere between 0900 and 1630, which must mean that they allow the drivers to pick which houses they want to go to at what time. Seven and a half hours is a pretty wide estimate time. I couldn’t go in the shower till the driver turned up at 1300 because I was scared of him turning up whilst I was in the shower and then deciding I wasn’t in since I hadn’t heard the door.

It was the same guy that picked up my laptop, and turned up the Friday before he was supposed to pick it up to, so maybe there’s only one Wednesbury guy? The problem with DHL compared to Royal Mail is that they only have a few distribution centres – my laptop was being kept in Sheffield which is freaking miles away – whilst if it was Royal Mail there’s a distribution centre right around the corner from me. I mean, I can literally see it from my window.

Anyway, I got my laptop back! They replaced his battery, so I know how three hours lifespan again, and they replaced his keyboard. I didn’t ask for that, but some of the keys had become shiney from over use. I wouldn’t have replaced it since it was still working perfectly, but meh. New keyboard! Really clean screen too.

Now, I really need to do that coursework.

Surrounded by idiots

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I’m currently on one of the computers at mum’s which is only slightly better than the ones at college; right click works!

Anyway, DHL came to drop off my laptop Friday, but no one was in the house. Then my sister forgot to bring the form they posted to my mum’s so I have to wait till Monday to even ask them to bring him again. I hope they don’t charge for that, or decide to get rid of him…

On an unrelated note: Ober got me playing World Of Warcraft. That wasn’t a very smart idea. I’ve played it for hours, and miss it already… Ober forbid me to buy it till I finish with my exams.

I has a Blood Elf

Well that’s… efficient of DHL

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The DHL just came and was like “Hai. I was just passing and thought I’d check if you’d like your laptop picked up now.”

Well, no. I don’t. That’s why I specifically asked for it to be picked up Tuesday and not today. Still though, it was nice of them to check. I’m a bit worried about what DHL are doing with my address before they need it though. Data protection act and stuff.

Toshiba’s coming to take him away!

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After I noticed my battery life dropped hugely, I decided to phone Toshiba and get them to come take a look. I got through to some Indian guy, on a really crappy line which sucks. But, if you’re going to be open till midnight, you have to go where the call centers are cheapest.

I got a phone call from another company, which I guess Toshiba sublets their repairs to, and set up the date for the 22nd, next week for them to pick him up and take him away. I’m actually nervous about being away from my laptop for a while. I hope they don’t take him for too long…

Anyway, on the phone I mentioned that since it’s just the battery they’re checking could they leave my data alone, and the woman (who was English and on a considerably better line) said that’s fine. She asked for me to include my Windows user password though, which I thought was weird. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure, but I guess they can’t start up the laptop without it. PC World just reset back to factory defaults as soon as they got it.

I think that since the laptop is still in warranty (extended warranty too, but it’s still in standard warranty) that I won’t have to pay anything. I’m fairly sure that the pick up and check is free… I didn’t ask though.

Before they collect him, I’ll have to do some cleaning. Stuff like, removing cookies and cache. I’m really not sure if I should be trusting Toshiba with my data, so I’ll make sure there’s nothing they can do any harm with. I’ll obviously back up pretty much everything. If I had 40Gb spare, I’d totally make a disk image and upload it… somewhere.

My battery life

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I’ve had niimo, my laptop, for less than a year now; I got him on the 27th of June-ish. And in less than a year my battery life has dropped from two and a half hours to forty-five minutes.

Battery ish dead

When I got the laptop I was told to only have it connected to the power when it needed to be charged; so I’ve religiously unplugged it when it gets to 100% and plugged it back in when I only have 2 or 3 minutes left. I dunno what’s happened…

Giving your TV away for free: you’re doing it wrong.

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I decided to check what was causing my hard drive to thrash, and it turns out it was Kservice.exe, which is basically a peer-to-peer service that 4oD uses.

I’m happy with that; Bittorrent was designed to take the bandwidth strain off distributors so that they can lower the costs of their service, which helps us out too by making them cheaper. What 4oD does is lets me download the TV show I’m watching from other people, and not just Channel 4′s servers.

I’m all for legal ways to use Bittorrent technology; the more ways there are, the more accepted it’ll become and ISPs will stop bandwidth throttling. What I’m against though is Channel 4 not telling me it’s doing this! It was most likely the the terms of service, which I don’t think any one really reads (Google’s TOS say that you have to be over 18 to use any of their services) so it should be more advertised that it’s doing it like this.

Not only was it uploading without me knowing, it was also maxing out my connection! Well, it’s not even my connection, since I’m sharing with my neighbours (they don’t know yet). There’s no where you can turn it down or even off unless you know what you’re doing. Kservice carries on uploading even after you’ve shut down 4oD which sucks.

Stupid virus

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That’s the forth time this virus notification has popped up. Each time it’s been stopped by Norton, thankfully. Norton doesn’t seem to get rid of it though… Anyone have any idea how I can remove it?

Update: As always, I failed to research enough. There’s a removal page on Symantec’s reference page about it.