K-Squared Ramblings

Cold Stone Fedora

• Smell of waffle cones from Cold Stone makes me wish I could eat there. Ice cream vs allergies. #
• Ran into one snafu w/Fedora11: xkb error popups every time I wake the computer from suspend. Resetting keyboard worked. #

Line Items for 2009-06-29

• I hate walking away from a sink going full-blast, but when it's fully automatic there's not much you can do. #
• Reset Gnome profile, broke @twhirl – had to delete entire ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS/ folder to be able to save settings again #
• Six-String Samurai is a seriously weird movie. #

Double Tap & Windows 7 Priorities

• This double-tap to unlock feature is probably good for not hitting numbers with your face while talking, but it’s a pain for phone menus #
• Um, yeah, that’s what I most want from an OS: “Microsoft also plans to offer [Windows 7] in an easier-to-open box.” #

Impressed by Smooth Fedora 11 Upgrade

A few days ago, my Linux desktop at work popped up a message saying that Fedora 11 was available, and asking whether I wanted to upgrade automatically. Well, I didn’t have time to deal with it then, and in the past when I’ve upgraded Fedora (either from a CD or from a downloaded image), it’s been a big production, what with running the installer, rebooting, installing updates, updating third-party repositories, and finally rebooting again after all the updates are installed.

So I put it off for a few days.

Today I decided to try it.

The automatic upgrade program is called preupgrade, presumably because it downloads everything you need in order to prepare for the upgrade. It downloads everything while your system is up and running, then sets it up so that when you reboot, it will launch the installer. It installs everything, makes the changes, then reboots into the newly upgraded system.

And then it’s done.

It’s network aware, and works through yum, so it will actually take into account both third-party repositories and anything that’s been updated since the new release. It actually went out to livna.org RPM Fusion and picked up the appropriate NVIDIA display drivers.

Download while you work. Reboot. Wait. Done.

The only snafu I ran into was that it removed my copy of the Flash plugin, but I think I was using the experimental 64-bit one anyway, so it’s not terribly surprising.

I get the impression that Ubuntu has had a similarly smooth upgrade process for a while. And after my experiences moving from Fedora 9 to Fedora 10, I was seriously considering jumping ship. (Hazards of living on the bleeding edge.) But it looks like I won’t have to.

Now I just have to find time to play around and see what’s new!

Line Items for 2009-06-24

• Spent all day fighting computer changes that SHOULD have worked. The one thing that was 100% painless: Fedora 11 upgrade, easier than ever. #

Persepolis, Robo-Ferrets & Drinking for Science

• Just watched Persepolis a few weeks ago. Very good. With the current mess in Iran, @netflix is recommending it #
• Gotta love this story title: Robotic Ferret Used to Fight Smugglers. #
• Drinking…FOR SCIENCE! #

Line Items for 2009-06-22

• Woo hoo! Flash player coming for Android phones! #
• Grr. SimpleTags has been eating the tags on posts that I've edited since installing it. Wish I could remember which ones I've edited. #
• Just got a $2 bill in change. Haven't seen one "in the wild" in years. #
• Spam subject: "2009 is here. are you?" Um, yes, last I checked… #

Do Not Climb on Mickey

Presented without further comment.

The Illusionist: Mini-Review

Watched The Illusionist. 1st hour, couldn’t get past lead characters being colossally stupid. Ending totally made up for it. #

Glass Bow

The other day I was walking past a construction site in the Irvine Spectrum area, and noticed a rainbow-like ring appearing in the road. I immediately thought of this mystery photo on APOD and its (rather technical) explanation. Naturally, I had to take a picture myself.

It basically is a rainbow, except formed by reflections in tiny glass beads (used for sandblasting) instead of raindrops. The physicist who posted his (much better) photo to APOD had a better camera handy. And a linear polarizer. (Don’t you always carry one of those?)

Sadly, I only had my phone.

Coffee & Crowds

• You know you need coffee when: you put a filter in the coffee maker, then go back to get…a filter for the coffee maker. #
• It gets better: after that I went to put the bag of coffee back in the fridge. Where I’ve never kept coffee. Ever. Batting 1000 today. #
• Mall is a lot more crowded than Wed. Sure, it’s Friday, but also I think schools let out yesterday. Waiting in line this time at Jamba #

DMOZ Contact Unknown

So is dmoz.org dead or what? Applied to edit a category, got the "reply to this to confirm" message, replied…and got user unknown. #

Update: I re-sent my confirmation from another address and it went through. Apparently their server doesn’t like mail from pobox.com. But instead of saying so, it gives a bogus “user unknown” error.

Oddities: Environment Ideas, Browser Bits…and Perry Mason

• Some are disturbing, but I like the staple-free stapler: RT @ThisIsTrue: Top 10 Odd Environmental Ideas #
• Aha! The 17 links that have stuck in the linkcheck queue since yesterday are all to posts on the old Spread Firefox site. Archive’s locked. #
• Spam: “Para legal information” from…Perry Mason. Wait, shouldn’t that be “Perry legal information?” #
• Odd: Opera’s Reinvent the Web event is launching at midnight Pacific time? #

Reach for the Sky

Spotted in Old Town San Diego.

Coffee Cliché

Realized I’m doing the cliche coffee+laptop+wifi thing…except I’m at home with coffee I brewed myself and using my own network. #