customising life

There are many criticisms of closed source or proprietary software.  I just want to whine about one in particular; the inability to fix bugs in the program.

Recently someone ‘upgraded’ a fairly well known piece of office software (no not that one) and in the process broke another program that was working in between said program and a custom DB system I had made.

Needless to say I was right pissed, only being told after the event; with no time to assess the upgrade, check that the new version would be compatible or to make sure it was done correctly.

The upgrade being done incorrectly left pieces of an old ODBC driver lying about the Windows registry (shudder), which took a long time to scour and clean up. It took me just as long to find the cause and solution to the problem as it did to fix it, due to poor documentation.

Anyway, finally, even after getting this driver working again, the second program, which runs between the two DB systems was still broken because it was not patched for this upgrade.

Their tech support tells me they are working on a patch, which won’t be ready until the end of the week. In the meantime, I am ferrying data between the two systems manually, and am ever so slightly, going crazy.

The final straw and the case for my argument was that the purpose of this so called ‘patch’ is to fix the part of the program that checks the version of the aforementioned DB program. If I could have modified the code, all I’d need to do is change it so it would allow the latest version. Apparently it would have been as easy as modifying a ‘10′ to an ‘11′.

Ai! Where’s my wine?

Finally found some time to quickly jot this down.

We had a two and a half day romp in the snow last weekend, which was uncharacteristically good for Aussie snow in July.

Thredbo has such a poor year of snow in 2006 (check out the Snow Depth Chart (1 MB PDF); possibly the worst in 40 years!), so I was anxious about our ski trip this year.

Fears were alleviated in the week leading up to last weekend, where the snow was just dumping down. In my history of Australian snow experiences, this was an unusual treat. The snow was fantastic!

We’ve already planned at least one return trip this season, maybe even two.

… and honestly my hair isn’t that bad.

Most people react to the fact that my hair is two weeks unwashed with disgust;

“your hair must be so gross!”

“please stand down-wind”

“don’t touch the pillow with your hair!”

The list goes on.

Yet all who have this reaction, do so out of an ingrained untruth. One that I am out to prove wrong; that you need shampoo.

It’s been two weeks since James and I, over several beers and a long night of poker, decided to forgo washing our hair with shampoo for several weeks as part of the Great Shampoo Challenge. Although the ‘Challenge’ is over (check out the results!) we still are giving it a go.

The theory is of course, that shampoo removes your hair’s natural oils, prompting your hair to produce more to replace them, prompting you to wash your hair again. It’s another one of those things, where the more you fight your body’s natural processes the more you get into trouble.

Now I still wash my hair with water, and I brush it a hell of a lot, and I must say it’s going better than I expected. Yes, it feels different to when you wash your hair with shampoo regularly, but I believe that the way my hair feels is more natural, than the squeaky, stripped hair feel you get after shampoo. It certainly looks better, and I’ve had next to no scalp problems (which were quite common in the times of shampoo). I have read that it will get worse before it gets better, but so far I’m optimistic!

Maybe we’re out to save the environment, maybe we’re rebelling against the ‘machinery of consumerism’ as Richard Glover writes, or maybe it’s just another one of those semi-drunk pacts, that you can’t take back. I still remember the ’swim every day of the year’ challenge a few years back …

In any case we’ve still got 4 more weeks to go. The challenge will continue.

I think I must have started several posts this last month, but have never been bothered/had the time to finish them. I’m sick as at the moment with a cold; a cold in Summer is just plain wierd! So maybe this will give me a chance to look at something new.

I did try out Mandriva One the other day to check out the 2.5D window manager; Metisse. It was an interesting experience, and some of the features are very cool. However I was a bit frustrated as I spent almost an hour trying to figure out how to use the most touted ability of Metisse; window folding.

It made me feel quite dumb, as it is also supposed to be one of the more easy features to use. To add insult to injury Mandriva couldn’t configure my wireless device so I couldn’t check out the video on how to fold the windows. The network configuration tool (net_monitor) did offer to use NdisWrapper to configure the wireless card, but I wasn’t sure if I could take out the Mandriva One Live CD to insert the D-Link driver CD, so that idea fell on it’s head. Still the tool did look promising.

Looking at that folding video, it doesn’t look too hard. Maybe I’ll give it another try…

I’m quite proud of myself.

Over the course of the last year and a quarter (since I’ve been into Ubuntu), I have slowly been introducing my parents to FLOSS; I’ve already sold them on Firefox/Thunderbird and then OpenOffice.org.

Recently my Dad has been more than impressed with how you can style your computer to your likes and needs; backgrounds, panels, icons and Beryl. But I think the selling point, was when I was able to breathe life into his sound card using the Xubuntu LiveCD; he had been unable to hear sound for many months, due to a broken and stubborn Windows driver.

Now they are after for a new PC, and with the success of my brothers, have commissioned me to make one for them.

And they want to use Ubuntu.

I’m almost decided on the hardware, and want to get it assembled as soon as possible, and then give it to them with Ubuntu pre-installed. Because I think the crucial part in this endeavor, is making sure that they have everything they need. Once I hand it over, it’s got to just work.

I most definitely don’t want them getting frustrated, because MP3s won’t play, can’t organise their photos, blah, blah, etc. Simple things in the grand scheme of things, but key to ensuring my parents are happy with Ubuntu/GNU/Linux.

So far I’ve only got a short list of things to do and install …

What applications do you think a PC with Ubuntu pre-installed needs?