So the other night I finally got around to doing a bit of “cleaning up” around the office. Actually, I’ve been tackling re-organizing the home office a bit for a few weeks as I’ve been transitioning to a new job - which is why I haven’t posted much lately as well (more on that another time).

The other night, it was time to tackle the computer itself. I recently purchased a second hard drive, a 500GB SATA that I picked up at Best Buy for just under $100 on sale. This will go along with the 350GB already in my Acer, and the 120GB external. I should be set for a lil while.

I also put the ATI TV Wonder card in the Acer, and I was going to put my LG LightScribe DVD burner in as a second drive… but while the ribbon cable on the current drive is standard, and has a second connector… all my power connections were for SATA type drives, not IDE. I guess I’ll have to look for an adapter. The hard drive came with one that would have converted the “old style” to use with the hard drive, but I need one for the other way around I guess. Or maybe I only need one optical drive… we’ll save that for later.

I didn’t want to just do an upgrade from Gutsy Gibbon to Hardy Heron, I had messed a couple things up just enough that I was hoping a fresh install would give me a chance to learn from my initial mistakes. That was part of why I bought a second drive, thinking I would do the new install on the new drive. Well, I still have a bit to learn about Linux and file partions… I need to force myself to sit down and read up about it.

No, I don’t need to know this to make things work. Actually, the install went pretty painlessly. The install program recognized my 7.10 install, and offered to put it on a separate partition, which I did. It has made migrating my data over very very easy. It basically repartitioned the drive so it now has a 112.4GB partition that is my old 7.10 install. Eventually, I will nuke it to reclaim the space, but now I know I can take my time in migrating everything over.

The partitioning is what took the longest, but the rest of the install was just as easy as it had been in 7.10. Now when I boot, it even gives me the option to boot to either 8.04 or 7.10.

Once the install was done, I started doing some poking around. There was a message about copying over my previous profile… and when I brought up Evolution, all my mail was there… almost. My IMAP settings for my five main accounts (yea.. five) were there, but my local folders were not. The contacts and other info was not either. However… a simple copy of certain files and folders from the .evolution folder on that 7.10 partition to the new one had me back in business.

Speaking of business… I had to upload some files for work. I LOVE Filezilla on Windows, and I’ll be honest - I was a bit disappointed with the Linux version. It’s just not as poslished or something. The window that list my folders/ftp sites does not remember the settings when I resize it… and the default opens so small it is hard to view the list of sites I manage. But performance wise, most of the same features I love about it are there, but some just act differently. Not a huge issues, just takes getting used to I guess. I decided to try a different FTP program since I had to reinstall anyways, and Kasablanca was on the list when I did a quick search under Add/Remove Applications. All I can say is… blech.

I spent about 15 minutes and couldn’t get it to connect to a server. Yes, I realize I was most likely doing something “wrong”, but I’m not a beginner, it shouldn’t have been that much of a hassle just to connect to a site. So I went back to Filezilla.

Now I need to get mp3 and a few other things up and running so I can listen to some of my favorite podcasts and such.

The Ubunutu Community Documentaton site has some easy to follow instructions for doing this. There’s a package to install via Add/Remove Applications, or one apt-get command to run, and bada-bing, bada-boom - you can now play most common multimedia formats, including MP3, DVD, Flash, Quicktime, WMA and WMV, including both standalone files and content embedded in web pages.

More on some movie stuff in a bit.

Quick recap from last week. I was house/dog/cat sitting for my aunt and her husband while they were on a cruise. The house part was easy, the cat part resulted in a few minor wounds, and it was all because one of the two dogs is afraid of me.

Regular readers may recall the fun I had trying to get a dog who is afraid of me to come back in the house when one has to hold the door open. Well, I have good news, by the end of the week Simon was coming back in the house while I stood there. Granted, he ran as fast as he could from the edge of the deck, in the door, and through the kitchen to the other end of the house before I could even turn around, but considering the rain and snow we had at the end of the week I was just glad not to have to run outside and chase him in through a propped open door.

Continue reading →

I am far from musically inclined - though I can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the tin whistle. The 10-year old in this video puts me, and most other adults I know to shame. In this age of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, this kid blows them all away.

I found this over on onmansblog.com - where he also has a clip of Kansas playing the same tune, and if she wasn’t bad enough, he’s got a post with videos of Top 10 Kids Who Prove We’re All Pathetic. He needs to update that list after finding this one.

10 Year Old Girl Plays Carry On Wayward Son [onemansblog.com]

I’ve been a bit too serious around here lately, so time for a break.

CrunchGear has a video up of a very well done skit about the old Duck Hunt video game. They then linked to the following video of a skit about Super Mario Bros. asking which was better.

Personally, it’s a toss-up for me, but the ending of the Duck Hunt one may give it a slight edge.

And if after watching these, you get a bit nostalgic, you can go play some Duck Hunt or Super Mario yourself.

“Thank You.”

There is so much that could be said in support of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - I’m not sure I could do justice to what they have put on the line for us here at home. So for now, I just am going to say “thank you”.

This video was done by a high-school girl that plans on enlisting after she graduates. She’s done a number of similar videos, but this seems to be the most popular by far, with over 23-million views and counting.

If you want to do more, one place to check is Operation Gratitude.

Ok, found this clip… and since they’re bout my favorite group at this point, I thought I would share it.