Geek.Like.Todd

UltraDefrag and Little Registry Cleaner.

Todd — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:06:32 +0000

If you do anything close to what I do and have to use windows alot I hope you’ve heard of these 2 programs especially when dealing with slow old machines that need some love before you pitch them in the trash.. I use Windows at home in a VM and even then with as little that i do on it I still have to defragment every so often, The open source project UltraDefrag offers alot to be free, even an offline defragmenter which can be scheduled at every boot if you really want.

Antoher program I use often is Little Registry Cleaner, it’s also open source and free or course.. and can be compared to the Windoctor that Symantec makes (or made..?) I use it on machines that have issues, often if you have some off the wall problem that might be registry corruption it may be able to find it. Keep in mind messing registry isn’t for the meek.

Destro and the Baroness Practicing the Clarinet!

Todd — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:20:22 +0000

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Upgrading a new kernel.. and removing old ones in Ubuntu.

Todd — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:20:10 +0000

I use Kubuntu 10.04.. which is begotten by Debian, and this should work on all Debian based systems.

Upgrading to the next available kernel is easy.. in a command line as root.. you type
sudo apt-get update
to update your list of available packages in the repositories.. then you type
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Simple enough right?

Well after each upgrade you will reboot and see that alas.. Grub can still boot into your old kernels.. but after 1 good boot I say that unless you just jack up your kernel a lot.. keeping only the most recent working kernel is good enough.. so..

How to remove all but your most recent kernel.

You need to know what NOT to remove.. so after you’ve upgraded your kernel or you are happy running what you got.. you type this.

uname -a
This will show you your current kernel version.. mine tells me:

Linux beater 2.6.32-24-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Thu Aug 19 01:12:52 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

In order to see what kernels we have installed we run

dpkg -l | grep linux-headers-*
Which for me returned:

ii linux-headers-2.6.32-21 2.6.32-21.32 Header files related to Linux kernel version ii linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic 2.6.32-21.32 Linux kernel headers for version 2.6.32 on x ii linux-headers-2.6.32-24 2.6.32-24.41 Header files related to Linux kernel version ii linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic 2.6.32-24.41 Linux kernel headers for version 2.6.32 on x ii linux-headers-generic 2.6.32.24.25 Generic Linux kernel headers

So since I know that 2.6.32-24 is my current, then I need to remove 2.6.32-21..

and to do that I type

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-2.6.32-21 linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic

Rinse / Repeat if you have multiple old kernels.

I think I may watch this movie..

Todd — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:13:44 +0000

Via: Term Life Insurance

Upgrading my Linux..

Todd — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:24:07 +0000

I’ve been using Linux at home as my desktop now for over a year, and in that time I’ve grown to love it.. and learned to live with upgrading it frequently.. in the windows and mac world you may keep a version of an OS for the life of the machine.. this is why many of you are still running OS X 10.4 and Windows XP.. they cost you money, and you got your machine with them pre-installed. Linux moves alot faster, for one the development process (like all things Open Source) is out in the open, so many of the distributions release frequently, somthing along the lines of 2 or 3 releases a year.

I use Mint which was begat by Ubuntu, which in turn was begat by Debian. This weekend I’m going to move from Linux Mint 8 KDE Edition (which is based on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic) to Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid, which is an LTS release of Ubuntu running KDE. I don’t mind using Mint at all but I feel like I’m a bit of a different user than I was a year ago.. who knows in 5 years I might be a Linux from Scratch guy.. rofl.. riiiight..

So this weekend I’ll be:

Backup up anything from my installation drive to other places.

Documenting things I may have running on my Linux box that need to be reinstalled / set up on the new installation.

Then wiping and installing. Because I don’t do upgrade installations.. EVER.

Alan Moore sez he doesn’t want Watchmen back

Todd — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:12:48 +0000

They offered me the rights to Watchmen back, if I would agree to some dopey prequels and sequels

So I just told them that if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked,” he said. “But these days I don’t want Watchmen back. Certainly, I don’t want it back under those kinds of terms.

Alan is Super Creepy looking..

See? But he’s brilliant.. and Hollywood movies made of his works (like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) always suck..

I’d be pissed too..

Linky:

OpenBTS

Todd — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:43:27 +0000

I was reading thru my Maker Magazine RSS Feed and came accross this open source project called OpenBTS, it’s a way for you to set up your own cellular GSM network in say.. a developing country so you can communicate via GSM phones for far far cheaper than using any traditional methods..

I think this is very very neat considering it also uses the opensource PBX project Asterisk, which I’d just love to use someplace to replace an aging PBX system in a company.. or allow for distributed VoIP in the home.

Neat Shizz!

I want a better car..

Todd — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:07:38 +0000

Not a newer car or a shinier car.. but a better car.. one that is smaller and far far more fuel efficient than the one I have.. I have the feeling that my next car (whenever I am done murdering my current one, which is a project that is currently well underway.. ) will be my last car powered by gas. But that doesn’t mean I need to keep trucking at below 40mpg.

These 2 cars are fine examples of what I need. A super cheap.. super efficient automobile.

This is a car which may soon be manufactured in India by joint effort from Renualt-Nissan and Indian car company Bajaj. It will cost only $3,000 and get a mileage of 70mpg.

Another car is the Tata Nano. I had talked about it earlier since it was supposed to go on sale in Europe. It’s even cheaper.. but gets less gas mileage.. they have a hybrid coming out but I have no Idea what the mpg is.

I wonder is a US car maker will be able to compete in this market and produce a car as cheaply…

RIP Kitty. :(

Todd — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:14:14 +0000

Before I had kids.. I had a cat..

In 1996 my then girlfriend Christy and I were visiting her mother and this little cat just would not leave us alone.. her mom said “she needs a good home take her.” so I did. Prior to Christy and I having Sarah, Kitty was more or less the closest thing we had to a kid.. After Sarah tho, the cat went outside..

A few years and a girlfriend later, kitty lived with me in a place or two.. but she wasn’t one to get along with other cats.. so eventually back to mom’s she went to live outside..

A couple of years ago, her health started to decline.. and a couple of weeks ago she started being treated for a growth on her face… mom made the decision to put her down this morning and she is now buried under a very nice Magnolia tree in her front yard with a very nice vew of the creek.

I will miss my cat.

I

Todd — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:52:56 +0000

The GIMP is an Open Source Image Editor similar to Adobe’s Photoshop, in many ways it is as good as PS especially for the things that most people may do with it.. and especially for the Price as Gimp is Open it is Free.

I recently found a set of Podcasts by a German Teacher who speaks pretty good english named Rolf Steinort. His site is called Meet The Gimp. He posts tutorials on many of the features and bugs in Gimp, I’ve been listening to them for a while and it’s opened my mind to what can be done with Gimp and Photo manipulation.. I’d suggest if you are interested since Gimp is free and lets face it you can’t keep torrenting that Pirated copy of Adobe forever.. You try it..