Monthly Archives: October 2007

Ubuntu 7.10 Update

 

Last night I was up late tweaking Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. The update from “Fiesty Fawn” last week went pretty good, except the wireless card wouldn’t activate on startup. If I booted the computer without the card plugged in, then plugged it in after Ubuntu was running, then it would work fine. Not too big a deal, but still a hassle. Part of my tweaking last night was to get that card to load on startup, and I just had to add one line to a certain text file. I did this with the earlier install, but it must have gotten over-ridden with the update. So now my laptop is fully functional. I then started doing the fun stuff, which was installing themes! I found a couple good ones that look kind of like Vista, and I think they look nice. Click on the pic above for a larger version.

I found several really nice ones here: www.gnome-look.org

Fishing Trip

Yesterday I went on a little fishing trip with Bay, my friend Jeremy, and his daughter May. Jeremy got the hot tip from the saleslady at the sporting goods store, and she steered him away from the place we were planning on fishing, and told him about a great little pond that “is filled with tons of fish”. Perfect for the kids! So we headed out to the small pond at about 5pm. The weather was really nice: warm and sunny, with no wind to speak of. There were a few ducks there, but they weren’t aggressive and let us have the fishing spot. There are basically only two really good places to fish from in this particular pond (it’s a secret!) because there are reeds and weeds all around the pond except for at these two places. But, as we were the only ones fishing, it was perfect.

We went with a plain bobber setup, with a size 8 hook on my virgin Daiwa ultra-light rod/reel combo. 4-pound test seemed to be perfect for small fish. We alternated between pieces of nightcrawler and canned corn kernels, but it didn’t matter which one we used, because the fish were biting either one. In fact, about one second after I cast into the pond for the first time, the bobber was going under! I didn’t hook the fish that time, but a few minutes later, we had our first catch! I let Bay reel in a few after I had hooked them, and he really enjoyed it. And when May caught her first fish, she went bananas! It was awesome to see the excitement of the first-time anglers. (Bay actually caught a catfish before at a carnival, but it just involved lifting up the line, so that doesn’t count.)

I hadn’t fished at a lake or pond in a long time, but it was so fun, and I am looking forward to doing it again soon. There are a few places we want to check out nearby, and hopefully we’ll have the same kind of luck. If not, we can always go back to the secret pond for some more bluegill!

Here are some photos of our fishing trip.

Second Earth Found

A friend and I were chatting about this story. He quotes an excerpt from it.

MyFriend: “The Earth-like Gliese 581C circles a star in the constellation of Libra that is cooler than our sun. Photograph: European Southern Observatory/AP”

MyFriend: why is their sun cooler than ours? w/e

AmazonMP3 Part 2

This weekend I bought and downloaded a couple of MP3 albums from the AmazonMP3 store. It was an almost perfect experience. The only hiccup was that I had clicked on the “By MP3 album with 1-Click” button, but then canceled the Amazon MP3 Downloader installation because something came up and I had to leave my desk. (You need to install that application in order to buy full albums.) Sometime later, I went back to the AmazonMP3 store, but couldn’t find my download waiting for me in the regular cart, so I browsed the catalog again to find the album, then did the 1-Click purchase. The Downloader started, and I could see the progress going, but then noticed that it was downloading the album twice! I opened up the Download Folder, and found two copies of each song. However, it seems Amazon is smart and I was only charged one time. But still, that order that was in limbo is a little bit screwed up.

What is cool about the Amazon MP3 Downloader app is that it automatically adds the new songs to iTunes. Very convenient! I really like the Amazon MP3 Store and recommend it fully!