Upgrades and Updates…my take

Generally I’ve found that when someone has the software on their machine upgraded (like in an office setting) or updated to a newer version, it does more breaking than fixing and causes general havoc for the user.

Now, I am a lover of things new and shiny and don’t really care if somethings break or need fixing b/c I’ve updated and upgraded to the newest and latest thing.  But the people I work with seem to not like this very much.

Upgrading and updating should only be done in two circumstances: 1. The user requests new/updated software or a new or upgraded machine.  2. The update/upgrade is legally neccessary.

If a user has not requested their software to updated then things are probably running pretty smooth in their little world.  However, software sometime requires an update not necessarily by law, but so that the end user can comply with new laws.  This I’ve seen is especially important with mortgage industry softwares such as Caylx Point.  I’ve seen so many mortgage companies running on very old versions of this software and I am continually asked, even though I don’t work in the mortgage industry anymore,  to pirate and provide up-to-date software.

So one, only update when asked for an update, and two, update only when legally necessary.

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Logitech LX7 Cordless Mouse working in Ubuntu

Ok after a few weeks of tweaking I finally got this nice little cordless mouse working as good as I can get it to work.

Xorg.conf settings:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Buttons" "10"
EndSection

then use xmodmap to map the buttons:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 8 9 6 7"

Now we need to make a startup script so this works when we restart and don’t have to go doing all this silly typing.

So I created a launcher with the xmodmap script as an “Application in Terminal” then “System”=>”Preferences”=>”Sessions” then click “New” on “Startup Programs” and the browse for the Launcher you just created!

SpeedTests – Various Locations and Mediums

Sprint Broadband Card Speed in Ubuntu @ Pablo’s on 6th:

CBeyond T1 in Ubuntu 8:40am Dec10,2007:

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Headphone Support for Acer Aspire on Ubuntu (finally figured it out)

So after I got the laptop speakers working a while back i could not figure out how to get the headphone jack rockin…so here it is…and its simple.

Open the sound config panel.  Go to  Edit=>Preferences.  Then add “Front” and “Headphone”.

Now you need to turn the “Surround” all the way down – or mute it – so that you don’t blast “Sexy Boy” to the entire coffee shop…whoops ;)

Then turn “Front” all the way up and under the “Switches” tab make sure “Headphones” is checked.

Now you should have headphone goodness…and spare the coffee shop your obsession with French chillout bands.

AJAX rating system

On my new site, www.KittenOrCougar.com, I’m testing out various methods of rating an object.  This eventually will be an image and I’ll need the site to load a new image after you’ve voted how much of a cougar the woman is in the picture.

So i’ve set up the basics – you can check it out – and I’ve started with the tutorial offered by Dave Naffis.

I have tweeked this so that I can have several objects on a page that all can be rated and have their star system updated via an AJAX request. I’m pretty happy with being able to do that for today but need to figure out how to rate an object and load another object and then displaying the last item’s rating (ala HotOrNot.com)

New Music from discoLustMACHINE

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Flash Freezes Mozilla Firefox Ubuntu (and sound issues)

Update: Haven’t run into this for a while but generally either update firefox (then restart your machine) or just well, restart your machine.

have no idea what is causing Firefox to, out of the blue, totally freeze when any flash content loads…youtube…beatport…my own flash stuff…anything. Can’t seem to find a fix on the web…if you know how to do this drop a line.

And I thought I lost my sound support – all at the same time as the Firefox incident…after reading tutorials on restoring/reinstalling/re-thinking-linux I gave up and decided to not go hacking my xorg.conf file or anything else…

Turns out you need to check all your cords…I check the speakers on my window’s machine – worked fine – and check the connection to the linux box – but I forgot I had an extension cable for the audio and the jack wasn’t making full contact…ha ha…no hacking needed…just a little wiggle.

Now for a nice date with my lady.

Update on PDF Generation and Emailing

Sick! After 15 minutes of setup and 4 hours of debuging I have the ability to generate,save, and then email a pdf all from a Rails app!

Here are the keys:

1. I’m using PDF::Writer for PDF generation

2. I followed the standard email with attachment setup outlined in Pragmatic’s Rails Recipe eBook.

3. The key is on the file read: file=File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/path/to/file.pdf") will result in an empty pdf – well not totally empty – it has all the data, it just won’t display it…shit…now what?

4.After 4 hours of hair loss I decided to  browse the PDF::Writer tutorial and found what does work: file= File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/path/to/file.pdf","rb")

Awesome.