Brains!

Lesser Evil?

Computers! Computers! Computers!

Well I had a busy weekend. Lots of computer issues to deal with. I had a couple of machines from work mates to look at. The first one had poker room popups, and I removed a virus and mountains of spyware and defragged - lots of boring scans nod32, Spybot, AVG, Adaware etc...

The 2nd was brand new Dell Laptop (17" widescreen!) with Windows Vista...
Now I havent played with Vista much, which meant that it took me twice as long to do anything! Took me a while to work out where to setup a dialup connection, but I found it! Most stuff isnt too different from XP, just look a level deeper or right click - its just different enough to make things difficult until you get used to it.

Then I got to look at one of my own PC's :)
My download/chat box was having some issues, it was running Ubuntu dapper 6.06, but my BitTorrent client (rtorrent) decided it didn't want to work after an update, I tried updating it, but it still played up, it seemed to freeze, resizing the terminal window (its a CLI program) seemed to make it play nice, but within a minute it would freeze again. I'd already given up on Azureus on this machine as it was too slow (1GHz AMD) so I tried deluge, went ok for a while, but was really thrashing the CPU after a while, and I couldn't control it remotely through ssh.
So I decided to install the latest test version of Ubuntu, I went with Xubuntu 7.10 Tribe 2 (an alpha version) I figure I'm not using it for much - how bad can it be?

Took me most of Saturday to get it sorted nicely... I was having issues with the terminal software, couldnt backspace (fixed that one quite easily in the preferences) and then irssi (best irc chat software EVAR!) wouldnt let me use the Alt-1 combination to change to the status screen!
I ended up installing the gnome-terminal (which had lots of dependencies; mono etc over 60MB) but worked fine once it was installed.

I also had problems with the desktop freezing, applications were still running, but I couldnt interact with anything, couldnt click on windows or menus, change desktops or anything. got me out of that and left rtorrent and irssi running in their screens :)
I think the problem was with firefox, as once I installed Opera and left firefox alone, everything worked sweet. I prefer Opera on this machine as I can leave it open for days on end whereas firefox leaks memory like a mofo!

The only other annoyance I had was my own stupid fault... I had backed up my home folder and copied it back into the new install, thinking it would keep all my settings for irssi, rtorrent and ncftp.... But when I pasted it back, I had hidden files not showing, so they got left behind...
I had already reconfigured irssi and rtorrent by the time I worked out that the rest of my files were still sitting there! At least I didnt have to start annoying people asking that ftp passwords be reset :)

So now I have a nice shiny new install of Gutsy Gibbon! I'm expecting it to be a little unstable and have a few application hiccups as Gutsy moves toward its final release, but it should all resolve itself over time with updates. Fingers crossed.

Also tried to set up Torrentflux (web based frontend for Bit Torrent downloading) using the instructions here. It worked pretty well, but I have an issue whereby when I add a new torrent it says it 'failed to download' I'm guessing it's related to permissions but I haven't quite worked that one out yet... Oh well I can still use rtorrent in the meantime.

I've also had another private job that I have been unable to do anything on for a while as I have been waiting for data.... Which finally turned up last week.
After examining the two datasets it is clear to me that joining them is going to be a right royal pain in the ass! Too many differences in the data structure and format. I was hoping that job could have been worth some extra money for my hardware fund, but looks like I will have to flag it. :(

And finally, if you are looking for a new kitten, check out trademe for a polydactyl kitty! My kittens are Aunties to this little fella. Although my 2 don't have the extra toes!

First Post!

Well, here I am.
A proper blog site...

All hail the Crimson King! What does it mean? Well it has two meaning for me - One is the band King Crimson and the other is the from the Stephen King series 'The Dark Tower'. Also my fileserver is called darktower (Black tower case)

I have had some post online before, on last.fm and on my own page what I made. But I figure why not use the tools available here... At least I won't have to do any html to get this up :)

Quickly about myself, I am a 35 year old male from New Zealand. I work for a rural district council as the IT Officer, I look after GIS, Website/Intranet, user support, and some server admin stuff.
I have 2 cats (7 month old kittens), I'll try not to bore you senseless with lots of cat pics - lol.
I'm in computers and the internet (obviously), I download a lot of TV episodes and stuff from the web, as NZ TV is so far behind the US. I'm into music - Mainly metal and prog rock \m/
And I read a lot of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. My favourite author is Brian Lumley.
I use IRC a lot and am the owner of the channel #hamilton on undernet - come say Hi!

This blog is likely to contain all manner of ramblings, including NZ politics, boring stuff that I am doing, stuff about linux (I run ubuntu), music, movies, LAN's, crazy links and pictures... In other words, the usual stuff :)

I'm hoping I can make posts at least weekly, but we will see how that goes :P