Ubuntu 10.4 Review

er — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:31:59 +0000

Sometime in the last century, or to be more precise, in the last year of the last century I’ve come across something called Linux. I worked for IBM and the tech showed me a CD that read “RedHat 3.4″. I had no clue what that was ….

Being curious and always on the lookout for something that works (in a world where not many things function as they could/should) I installed it and ever since, a minimum of one GNU/Linux distribution was always installed on one of my computers!
The last time I’ve checked out Ubuntu was a few years ago and it was OK but since it did not work with my wireless chip on an Toshiba Qosmio laptop, I moved on to other distros such a SUSE, PALDO, Fedora and a few oddballs as they popped up on http://distrowatch.org

The other night, I’ve downloaded the latest Ubuntu release because of a few reasons …

I administer a few WordPress driven web sites and am in the process of moving away from Flash video as the latest hand held devices can not, or shall I say, are note allowed to deal with Flash!
The easiest way to make video standards compliant is to use an open source solution to encode the files and then tweak the web sites and add the new HTML 5 tags as needed.

My main development machine is an iMac and I use Paralells Desktop to run additional operating systems as needed for testing.

So here is my quick impression of Ubuntu 10.4

On my Toshiba Qosmio laptop, the wireless chip worked out of the box! (unlike a few versions back)
Upgrading the nvidia gfx drivers was quick and worked the first time
Ubuntu 10.4 had no troubles to install and configure my new HP printer
Best of all, the system, as any Linux system, is stable and for some reason, feels FAST!!!!

I will add to this post over the coming few days and weeks but for the first time ever I can say that Ubuntu is an excellent choice not only to run as an alternate OS for those who dual boot, but also for those who want an easy to use, fast and secure install that is easy to backup and fast to install in case something happens.

If you have heard about Linux but never used it so far, check out Ubuntu! I’m quite impressed how far this particular distro has come

The future is portable and so is my iPad

er — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:43:56 +0000

The writing was on the wall for a while now and all it took was that one piece of well crafted gadget which would brake the ice and bring very portable computing to the masses.
The hardware is elegant and after using it for a few minutes it became obvious that those to brought it to live are very clever people! How ever, not everything is cleaver in Apple land, especially for those of us who develop software.
As the saying goes: “In the land of the blind, the guy with one eye is king”. Apple is king … for now and therefore they get to control what gets installed onto their hardware.
This is a shame because I would prefer to make my own and most importantly, port all the virtual instruments from xyloFUN.com over to the Apple platform.

Because of the massive amount of work involved, I’m holding my breath hoping that the Google Android based tablets which should see the light of day sometime this fall, will put me right back on track and let me live happily ever after!

The iPad bags available in the trendy stores are a huge rip-off! I bought the bag seen in the image above for $9.99 at Zellers and not only does it protect the iPad well, it also stores my cell phone and scribble paper and stuff.

iPhone iPad next might be the iCcordion

er — Sun, 09 May 2010 23:59:20 +0000

Click on the image above to load the video

They say that once you know how to ride a bicycle, you never forget …

About 30 years ago, I became fascinated with music and like many of my friends in Austria, I too wanted to perform with a band. To do so, I’ve asked one of the well known musicians in our region to teach me how to play the button accordion which he gladly did! Eventually, my dream came true and I got to play with a professional band which was a lot of fun but, as always in life, time does not stand still and after immigrating to Canada, forgot about the accordion and focused on electronic keyboards which were finally affordable.
Fast forward 22 years, while browsing the net I’ve discovered that someone had written a program that would turn an qwerty computer keyboard into an accordion and I could not help but give it a try! To my big surprise, my fingers still remember a few things!

The software is available for Mac as well as PC and can be downloaded from here: http://code.google.com/p/accordion/

Have fun playing accordion on your keyboard!

Toshiba Qosmio nVidia GO 6600 Drivers

er — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:24:07 +0000

A few years ago (2005), I bought a Qosmio laptop, if I recall this right it was the first in the series that Toshiba produced. It was not a good buy as within the first three years, the machine needed three major repairs which were covered by an extended warranty plan I’ve purchased before leaving for Europe.

One of the repairs required a new main board and with that, the original system restore DVD was no longer usable and I was given a new one from Toshiba. Eventually, I’ve installed Linux and because it worked well on that hardware, I’ve made Linux my only operating system until now when I had a need to temporarily install XP to do a specific task.

Since I no longer kept the restore DVD, I had to install XP manually which is not a big deal as I’ve done that hundreds of times over the years. The only problem was that no matter where I went on the net, no one had the video driver available for download! In a way, that was a good thing because in the past, I was always forced to use the old driver which was last updated in 2007 but, with a little bit of luck and some google searching, I came across a site that made a conversion software available so that I could use the standard video driver desktop machines use after it was patched.

I gave it a try as the laptop is very outdated and the risk of ruining it was minimal. To make a long story short, it worked! I was able to install the gfx card driver (latest version) and finished to job without a glitch!

The URL for that conversion software is found here: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/nvmodtool.php
If that link does not work, google “nvmodtool” instead!

Here are the steps:

Download the GO 6600 driver from nVidia
Download the nvmodtool from the link above
Patch it and install! That’s it

Over the years, I have run a variety of Linux distributions on that laptop. SuSE 10.2 used to run perfect on it as did Paldo GNU/Linux. Now I run PCLinuxOS 2010, gnome version and graphics, sound and wireless work out of the box with no further tweaking. But as I mentioned, the age of the machine shows and these days, it serves only two purposes. One is online banking and the odd time I take it with me to demonstrate some of my music software which I am developing for xylofun.com

Beautiful British Columbia – Hope

er — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:29:45 +0000

Growing up in Austria, small town life didn’t offer much excitement and for some reason, cinemas were dying a slow death because … I actually don’t know why but perhaps it had something to do with the mediocre films of the 80′s? I didn’t go much but I remember one movie which I wanted to see but, there were no tickets available. The movie was sold out for weeks and when I finally managed to get a ticket, I sat in a lousy spot but saw a GREAT movie!

The title of that movie was “Rambo” and it was fascinating to see it! I loved the breathtaking scenery and at the age of 19 had no idea that one day, I would walk those same streets in the town of Hope where the filming took place about 25 years ago.

The town is quite small but everyone is so friendly and hospitable, it made the visit a memorable one

Eastman Kodak Pocket Camera

er — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:00:14 +0000

Being able to take photos used to be special but now that digital cameras are everywhere, that is no longer the case. Take a look at the camer pictured to the left! She is a beauty and about 100 years old!

I’m tempted to have the film developed … you never know what she saw the last time she looked???

Usually I am not fascinated with “old stuff” but than again, there is a first time for everything I suppose ?

Interactive Software WiP

er — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:52:26 +0000

Here is a sneak peek of the new trumpet module for “Little Composers”! I’ve finally managed to get rid of the black background which allows me to design a much nicer interface to import the lessons into

Once everything is finished, you can test the software at: http://littlecomposers.com

ernstrenner.com

er — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 04:38:36 +0000

[[Show as slideshow]]