I know I haven’t posted for a few days, so I figured I’d send out a few minor updates.
First, this past Monday, I performed in The Homo Show, a variety show put on by About Face Theatre. It was tons of fun and, although I was really nervous, it went well. I performed a piece based off this post, although with a more positive ending. I got lots of positive feedback (and apparently made one woman cry, which is a first for me…) so it charged me up as I work toward my December performance.
On a separate note, I’m typing this on a shiny new (old) Power Mac G5 – one of the more advanced pre-Intel Mac desktops. I’m still getting used to it and all its quirks… For example, I know “different” and “stupid” aren’t the same thing, but some of the Mac keyboard shortcuts are just flat out stupid. As far as I can see, there’s no rhyme or reason to why some shortcuts use Ctrl, some use Apple, and some use Option.
If anyone knows of any logic behind Apple’s shortcut choices, I’d love to hear about it…
Continue reading 'Some quick updates'»
I’ve mentioned my status as ‘geek’ on more than one occasion. As it relates to computers, I have a laptop (which I’m using more and more as it’s nice to sit in the living room and write blog posts about how I’m able to sit in the living room blogging) and a desktop (which I use for media storage and playing games).
Unfortunately, it seems like the desktop is on the way out.
Continue reading 'Silly computer…'»
I’ve mentioned before that I use Ubuntu as my primary operating system on my laptop and desktop. They recently released version 9.04 and, after taking a deep breath, I took the plunge and upgraded both of my systems.
This is the first upgrade I’ve had where more things went right, and work better, than went wrong or outright broke (and I’ve been using Ubuntu since 5.10). Now, to be clear, my appreciation of Ubuntu has obviously kept me with it, but I have to give shoutout for this release. The system boots much faster, visual effects are smoother and work better (windows fading in and out, moving between virtual desktops, doing a Expose-like window display, and so on), everything just feels like it’s tighter and more polished.
And, wonders of wonders, my desktop’s aging graphics card (an old ATI) not only didn’t break with the upgrade, it works better now! Still no working Steam, which is sad, but Deus Ex is (at long last!) working under Wine! Deus Ex is one of those supposedly-great games from when I was in middle or high school that I never had the patience to finish, but am now hoping to. (Along with others such as System Shock 2, Fallout, No One Lives Forever, and so on.) Because upgrading the full system upgraded a bunch of components, including Wine, there’s no way of telling exactly what made things work, but I’m happy something did! (It’s a lot like alchemy in that regard…)
If you’ve been thinking about giving Ubuntu a try, 9.04 is definitely the smoothest experience I’ve had with the system thus far. So go for it!
-R
Feel free to ignore this post if you’re not a computer geek and/or have no interest in computer geekery…
I use Ubuntu as my only OS on my desktop and my primary OS on my laptop (where XP is still installed as a secondary OS ‘Just In Case’) and I wanted to take a moment to sing Ubuntu’s praises.
First, with the exception of get newer video games to work, I can do everything I could imagine on Windows and, in some cases, more. I can watch DVDs, videos online, listen to music, transfer songs to my used iPod mini, etc, etc, etc. I have Azureus (well, now Vuze) automatically downloading TV shows I like via torrent RSSes, and the video files shared to my XBox with XBMC through Ubuntu’s Samba server so I can watch ‘em on the TV in the living room. I can rip DVDs via DVDShrink through Wine, and burn the resulting ISOs with Ubuntu’s file manager. (Something Windows still can’t manage, grr.)
(The video games are a function of my old video card not having good drivers, something I hope to rectify by the end of the summer by upgrading. I could buy the components of my current computer, which I bought new for about $1000 about 3 years ago, for about $400. I think spending $200 for a new mobo, RAM, CPU, and video card isn’t too shabby.)
Continue reading 'In which I geek out'»
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