Lucid Lynx forecast

MadsRH, a blogger with blogspot, has an excellently written and well presented blogpost on what he envisions Ubuntu Lucid will be like. He goes through some of the possibilities based on what has been said at UDS, making it alot easier to see what's coming in 1 centralised blogpost. This is very useful, and while some of the points aren't as detailed as you may like, I'm sure more details will present themselves with time.

LINK

10 good reasons to dislike linux

I have to say I really enjoyed this article, being an adamant linux user, I really think he hits home with some really hard hitting points. Of course, the article is written about his personal experience as someone working in IT, so some of his points may (and probably won't) be a factor for you. My favourite point is point no.10 where he comments on a serious (but in my opinion, inevitable) issue with free software and business.

10. Stability - For eight years, I owned and operated a computer consulting business and whenever I converted parts of my client's infrastructure to Linux, I basically hurt myself. I hurt myself by giving them something so stable and unbreakable that I found myself wondering why I had done such a silly thing.... It wasn't until I had several of my clients on Linux that I realized what I had done. I was killing my business.

LINK

Chrome OS now offered by Dell for MINI 10V

Good start for chrome OS as dell offers custom source code for their mini 10v. From what can be seen, not much has been changed, but it supports wifi out of the box and comes in the form of a USB image for easy installation on netbooks.

LINK

Of course you don't need this netbook to try out chrome, you can also install it on a virtual PC without any change to your hard drive. This has been well documented, but there's a great easy to follow guide here.

MiKandi offers "adult" app store

Rob Jackson on pharanoid has an article titled "Android Porn Market from MiKandi", due to MiKandis new adult themed market. Great article, but I'm having questions about the title. An adult themed market doesn't need to be porn, indeed there's only so many games that can be porn related, and if people want porn, an easier and cheaper option would be to simply download it for free. On the adult side, any app or game that isn't entirely pg could be included, more ethnically questionable apps such as a juicy bittorrent client, or a particularly "gory" game. And what else could this app store be used for? well I don't see why they don't extend their app range to every app that would be rejected from the market. If developers realised they could make an app about anything with fear of rejection from the market, then this site could be huge success.

LINK

Day 3: Everyman 2 sleep schedule

Info

Day 3, half 6 in the morning, got up at 5.15.

How I feel

At the moment I don't feel tired at all, getting up was a bit of trouble, but an hour later I feel energetic.

1st nap yesterday For my 1st nap yesterday morning I had the weirdest dream I've ever had. It was like I was high. My body felt like it was floating or falling, but only at will. At 1 point I felt like I was beside a waterfall and I could hear the river bashing against the water, I knew I was dreaming, but was unable to make the noise go away. It was extremely odd, it took me picturing myself inside my bed to convince myself that I wasn't infact at the bottom of a waterfall. I wrote this after getting up after the nap so it's a fairly accurate description

Thoughts

Feeling alot less tired, as I did on day 3 the 1st time I tried the everyman 2 schedule.

Ubuntu 10.04 re-introduces 100 paper cuts

100 paper cuts is such a great ui improvement idea that it's actually embarrassing that it was never thought of before. The problems are so simple, but if they were fixed they would provide a seamless and professional initial experience. If you don't know, a paper cut is defined as:

a trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a brand new installation of the latest version of Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

So any issues you or someone you know runs into in their 1st day, you know the "this is stupid, why did they do that" issues that we may no longer notice, and that are so small nobody bothers to report them. My personal favourite example of this, is the error you used to get when you tried to run apt-get with synaptic open, you know the one ;)

Ubuntu geeks article

Google launches coupons in local search

This is a handy little story, that seems like a win win for everyone. Google now include coupons for shops, restaurants, bars and more in it's localised search. We get cheaper goods, google gets more business, the companies get more business. Good move by google.

LINK

Google testing out new interface, 'bout time

An article on Gizmodo talks about how google is testing a new interface on random users. It seems to have integration with google services, namely google maps, search suggestions and options and a more web 2.0 (but imo less attractive) centric interface. I think this is a necessary step for google, with bing obviously posing quite a threat with it's new and renovated interface. I can't help but feel though that the colour and button scheme remind me more of an ad site (the sites where you mispell the domain name) than a professional search tool.

LINK

Day 2: Everyman 2 sleep schedule

Info

It's about 5:40 am, I've been up since 5. -4 degrees Celsius outside.

How I feel

Quite tired this morning, as you'd probably expect. Getting up is the main problem, once your up you feel great, for a few hours atleast. As for naps I didn't get any sleep for the 1st nap yesterday and not too much either for the 2nd, but still felt good after.

Thoughts

Any negative effects? Well it's a bit early to tell, but feeling wrecked coming up to nap times seems fairly common and you look quite pale, not too bad I guess. I feel a bit dodgy driving too and have turned down requests to drive where I felt too tired.

Once again, not too eventful, just tired. I'll keep you posted with anything interesting. The great thing about having 3 hours extra in the morning though is being about to commit to your blog.

Chrome os benchmarked and compared

I don't like linking to slashdot articles as you've probably read them already, but I've been very interested in chrome OS recently, and some of you might be interested in how chrome os fared against Ubuntu netbook remix and Moblin. Another typically brilliant review from phoronix too.

LINK

2nd iPhone worm, targets online banking

1 worm rickrolls you, the other steals your credit information. It's not as bad as it sounds though, it's a simple phishing scheme, so most of you would cop on not giving your details to a random site. The worm works on the same basis as the 1st work, ie. it only affects jailbroken iPhones with the default ssh password.

Anyway, you should be using android ;)

LINK

Wikipedia losing volunteers

CNet have an article by Lanch Whitney about wikipedias decline in volunteers. The article is based on a post in the wall street journal about wikipedias decline and the reasons more people are leaving than coming, citing reasons such as arguements about content etc.

LINK

Rant about Gimp, F-spot, Mono and Ubuntu

Haven't given any links to the blogosphere about Ubuntu dropping the gimp (something I agree with btw, even as a regular gimp user), so here's a quick rant from YaManicKill.

LINK

Chromium bookmark syncing available on linux

This seems like a really handy tool. I like the author use xmarks to backup my hundreds of firefox bookmarks, but an official backup manager linked to your gmail account, on linux, is great innovation.

LINK

FOSS POV; 5 things about corporations

Steve Harms' has a nice blog post about 5 things he's noticed about corporations, from a linux dev/sysadmins standpoint.

LINK

Ubuntu firewall simple howto

I really like this, a blog by the name of "Shadows of epiphany" has make a simple yet pragmatic howto on setting up Ubuntu firewall, including setup and configuration for allowing peer to peer connections.

LINK

FSF ensures paypal stays free

Another one from tuxmachines.com today, paypal had always been a supporter of free software by not requiring proprietary software to use the site. However the fsf recently noticed paypal "had added a proprietary software license to its User Agreement".

LINK

13 semi-abstract linux howto's

A great blog post has been posted by tuxmachines.org which contain 13 abstract howto's, including setting up a firewall in Ubuntu, strong wifi authentication in Linux and handy terminal tips (the ones you never remember!).

LINK

Day 1: Everyman 2 sleep schedule

Info

Well I really started last week, but due to events that I hoped wouldn't affect the schedule, I decided to go back to the normal schedule for a few days and start on the everyman today.

My schedule is roughly as follows:
Core Sleep: 12.30am to 5am
1st nap: 8am (cheating really, but it's the only free time!)
2nd nap: 6.30pm

A bit of a gap between the naps, but it's realistically the only times I can make, and it also ensures I'm well rested before going to school/work.

How I feel

Well it's 6.00 am in the morning and I got up an hour ago, but I don't feel too bad. When you psych yourself up enough before going to sleep so that you know you will be getting up early the next morning, you generally feel more in control. The main thing to do is get up instantly, as there's quite a risk of going back to sleep.

Thoughts

It just feels like I had a bad sleep the night before. Not too eventful, I'll keep you posted.

Everyman 2 sleep schedule, polyphasic sleep

What is polyphasic sleep?

You may not know it yet but you're probably familiar with polyphasic sleep already, with the most famous schedule probably being the siesta. Polyphasic sleep is sleeping to a schedule in such a way that the amount of time you spend asleep is reduced, but the quality of sleep is increased, leading to a better overall sleep. When you sleep, the body passes through 5 stages on it's way to get the most important sleep, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The idea is that with polyphasic sleep, you can train your brain to go straight to the REM stage of sleep in 20 minute naps throughout the day. As it takes your body an hour and a half to reach REM stage normally, each 20 minute nap will drastically take away the amount of core sleep needed, and will allow you to feel like you've had a full nights sleep, in 20 minutes.

That's a brief intro, there's much more info on the web, and explanation I quite like is how to hack your brain, which is a really nicely presented page detailing the basics.

How does it work

As you can see from the page there are different schedules to suit your routine, and how many times you can take a nap in a day, from a siesta with 1 nap, to the uberman which comprises of 6 naps throughout the day (that's just 2 hours sleep!). The ubermanl is the best documented, however it is said to only suit the schedule of ~2% of people, and is very difficult to adjust to.

So what are you doing?

I'll be doing (I am doing) the everyman 2 sleep schedule. This is sleeping for 4.5 hours at night, and then 2 naps throughout the day. It may not be too extreme, but it's still 3 hours less sleep a night, and is the only one that I can fit into my schedule. The everyman 2 is perfect for me and I imagine most people as I can only guarantee myself 2 naps a day (if even) and the caveat about polyphasic sleep schedules is that you can't miss your naps or you will feel wrecked, and it will throw your entire schedule off. Also, the less intense a schedule you follow the more flexible it is regarding times, which is very useful as more than likely you'll get caught up doing something and miss a nap by a few hours. For example, my core sleep should start at 12.30 am, but if I go out that night, it mightn't start until 3/4 am. For more info on the uberman, check out here, an account from someone who's done the uberman for 6 months, talking about the everyman.]

My schedule is roughly as follows:
Core Sleep: 12.30am to 5am
1st nap: 8am (cheating really, but it's the only free time!)
2nd nap: 6.30pm

A bit of a gap between the naps, but it's realistically the only times I can make, and it also ensures I'm well rested before going to school/work.

Here's a list of the days, I should stick to it fairly well, except for 1 day this week when I can't avoid an event that will completely throw off the schedule. Also note, the posts during these times may contain spelling or grammatical errors, as I'm probably wrecked.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Days 7-9
Days 10-12
Days 13-19

Finally, please feel free to comment any of my posts, you don't need to sign up and it's a great way for me to answer any questions or receive feedback. Thanks!

Midori review

Windows won't boot with Error 0x0000225; A working solution

Well recently I partitioned my HDD to allow space for my Ubuntu 9.10 install. So to do this I did as I always did, I booted parted magic and used gParted to partition the drive. Everything went normal and it took about 2 hours to reduce my 400 gig debian install to 110 gigs. I then decided as I had it open, I'd increase the size of my windwos vista partition by 30 gigs, as it was running out of space. So I did the same as I'd always done and not too long later the partiton was increased.

And of course, when I reboot the machine, all my OSs work perfectly, except for windows, which gives the following error (well, along these lines anyway) ;

Windows has failed to boot, insert recovery disk etc...

File: \windows\system32\winload.exe

Status: 0x0000225

Info: Application missing or corrupt

So I poked around, I mounted windows on my linux box (very relieved to find the filesystem was intact) and found the file was indeed there. After a bit of google I found a few solutions that didn't work such as copying the winload.exe file from another directory. In the end, I decided that I'd simply do what the error message said, boot a recovery CD and hit repair. now I didn't like the sound of this, mainly because everytime I'd use a windows cd to recover windows OS, it either overwrote the system or destroyed my bootloader (or most annoyingly, installed the windows bootloader on other HDDs making it impossible to use GRUB as my bootloader). So I found a link to the torrent on neosmarts blog and burned the iso to a dvdrw. Learning from my mistakes, I backup everything up on a seperate HDD and unplugged all the other HDDs from my PC. I booted up the cd, 10 minutes later it fully boots. Nervously I press repair, it nicely tells my my problem, and if I'd like to repair.

I went for it, and amazingly, it took about 5 seconds and rebooted as normal. I was met by my lovely grub menu, and windows worked as though nothing ever happened. This came as a big shock to me, as I figured it would ATLEAST overwrite my bootloader.

Anyway, this post is simply meant as a reassurance to anyone who get this error, that microsoft won't completely mess your pc, and not to be afraid to use their recovery disk. The problem should never have occured in the 1st place, but fair play to microsoft for changing nothing, and making what seems to be a useful tool.

To sum it up:

1. Download and burn iso image which can be torrented here
2. Boot from cd and click repair

Everything should now work perfectly.