A taste of Linux.

Still going, still making the odd whirry noise but its now become intermittent - its starts whirring for no apparent reason and stops for no apparent reason. And then the fan goes back to its normal almost quiet mode of operating and blowing out the heated air, and you can definitely hear the fan speeding up again - but whilst its whirring, its heated air output is vastly reduced such that the palm of the hand is only just aware of the movement of air across it. Its odd and its annoying me!

Why do technology and machines always break down when you can't get the technical support or backup that they need? Does the machine have an inbuilt clock that knows when people are not available to repair it, or the shops are shut when you need spare parts?

Last night at 2245, one of the fans on the power supply unit started making a horrible whirring noise and I honestly thought it was someone in this block of flats using a power drill - except it was so late, and its air pushing out was drastically reduced to almost the point of nonexistence! It soon corrected itself back to its normal output and the whirring noise stopped. And then it did it again! And again! And this morning, that fan has stopped working completely.

Now, its not the end of the world, as the power supply unit has two fans (one of which now doesn't work!) and another powerful fan in the side of the case, and its all still expelling the heated air but it obviously needs attention. So I rang my local computer shop where I get most of my hardware, as I've got it in the back of my mind that the PSU has a two-year warranty and I only bought it in March, but there was no reply from the shop ....... they're obviously still on their Christmas break. Aarggh! Lets just hope that it keeps going until I can replace it, which will probably be next year! Watch this space, and if I don't post then just possibly its all overheated and burnt out ....... again!

Update - December 30, 2004 5:35 PM.
Well, the computer is still going, and it seems a lot quieter with one fan seemingly not running. I phrase it like that because it is still running, just not pushing the air out as much as before. And it doesn't seem to be running too hot either, nor too noisily, although it does occasionally seem to alter the fan speed as the fan noise changes. I don't know whats wrong with it, all I do know is that its not working right and its more noisy on odd occasions for no apparent reason! Wierd!

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

And the source for this article is Making firefox faster as I forgot to attribute it earlier.

Afrikander - "Een Plesierige Kerfees"
Arabic - "I'd Miilad Said Oua Sana Saida"
Argentine - "Felices Pasquas Y felices ano Nuevo"
Armenian - "Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand"
Basque - Eguberri on
Bohemian - "Vesele Vanoce"
Brazilian - "Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo"
Breton - "Nedeleg laouen na bloavezh mat"
Bulgarian - "Tchestita Koleda; Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo"
Chinese - [Mandarin] - "Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan"
Chinese - [Catonese] - "Saint Dan Fai Lok"
Cornish - "Nadelik looan na looan blethen noweth"
Croatian - "Sretan Bozic i Nova Godina" (Merry Christmas & Happy New Year)
Czech - "Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok"
Danish - "Gl�elig Jul"
Dutch - "Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar"
Inupiaq Eskimo (Kotzebue area in NW Alaska)-Quvianagli Anaiyyuniqpaliqsi suli Nakuuluni Ukiutqiutiqsi- (Merry Christmas) (and) (Happy New Year)
English - "Merry Christmas"
Farsi - "Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad"
Filipino -"Maligayang Pasko" Happy New Year in Filipino -"Manigong Bagong Taon" Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in Filipino -"Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon"
Finnish - "Hyvaa joulua"
French - "Joyeux Noel"
German - "Froehliche Weihnachten"
Greek - "Kala Christouyenna"
Hawaiian - "Mele Kalikimaka"
Hebrew - "Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova"
Hindi - "Shub Naya Baras"
Hungarian - "Kellemes Karacsonyi unnepeket"
Icelandic - "Gledileg Jol"
Indonesian - "Selamat Hari Natal"
Iraqi - "Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah"
Irish - "Nollaig Shona Dhuit"
Italian - "Buone Feste Natalizie"
Japanese -" Shinnen omedeto, kurisumasu omedeto. The first part is translated "Happy New Year. Kurisumasu omedeto means Merry Christmas. Japanese people generally add the expression gozaimasu to indicate soemm humility.
Korean - "Sung Tan Chuk Ha"
Latvian - "Prieci'gus Ziemsve'tkus un Laimi'gu Jauno Gadu"
Lithuanian - "Linksmu Kaledu"
Navajo - "Merry Keshmish"
Norwegian - "God Jul"
Pennsylvania German - "En frehlicher Grischtdaag un en hallich Nei Yaahr"
Polish - "Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia"
Portuguese - "Feliz Natal" "Boas Festas"(Good Holidays.)
Rumanian - "Sarbatori Fericite"
Russian - "Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva s Novim Godom"
Serbian - "Hristos se rodi"
Slovakian - "Sretan Bozic or Vesele vianoce"
Samoan - "La Maunia Le Kilisimasi Ma Le Tausaga Fou"
Scots Gaelic - "Nollaig chridheil huibh"
Serb-Croatian - "Sretam Bozic. Vesela Nova Godina"
Slovak - "Vesele Vianoce. A stastlivy Novy Rok"
Slovene - "Vesele Bozicne. Screcno Novo Leto"
Spanish - "Feliz Navidad"
Swedish - "God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt"
Tahitian -Merry Chrismas :" Ia orana te Noera" and Happy new year is "Ia orana i te mata iti api"
Thai - "Sawadee Pee Mai"
Turkish - "Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun"
Ukrainian - "Z Rizdvom Khrystovym !" - "Merry Christmas" " Z Novym Rokom !" - "Happy New Year" "Z Rizdvom Khrystovym i Novym Rokom !" - both greetings together.
Vietnamese - "Chuc Mung Giang Sinh"
Welsh - "Nadolig Llawen"
Yugoslavian - "Cestitamo Bozic"

Much essential information is held in 'man pages' which are essentially information about a program which may also contain command line instructions, and any other relevant information, and is usually accessed in a console terminal. I have found that it is awkward to read these pages and remember the information because of the difficulty in scrolling within it.

But now this seems to have been resolved by using Konqueror ... all you need to do is to put 'man:/' into the location bar and it then displays the 'UNIX Manual Index'. However, this is still a bit of handful to find your way around, but, if you know the name of the program or command that you need information on then you can just put 'man:/????' into the location bar where '????' is the name of the command or program. And it is so easy to scroll up or down, or find the information that you want using the find command [Control + f].

Well I listened to the computer music last night, and it was awful! Completely atrocious! It left me feeling nauseous and with the beginnings of a migraine! Maybe it should carry a government health warning?!

Please, if you value your health, don't download it and listen to it, but, if you do have enemies ........ then it would make a nice Christmas Present for them!

I was looking at the Royal Mail web site today to find out the very last day of posting for Christmas (and in the UK its 21st December) and I came across this idea of 'SmartStamp' where using special software you can print your own stamps on your envelopes. Great idea I thought, could be useful, only costs [to give them a cheap advertisement £4.99 a month, or £49.99 a year. So I started looking and digging a bit deeper to learn more about it ...... and the first place that I look is always the FAQ's.

Can it be used on my computer (a Linux box running Fedora Core 3)? In short, no! It only works on MS Windows machines! Well that is going to immediately cut down part of their market who don't run MS stuff for whatever reason, and the Linux market is growing year on year.

Thanks Royal Mail, you could've had a new customer for your SmartStamp service if you'd tried to cover the whole computer marketplace and included Linux machines! Well, its your loss ........ but mine too, as I'm back to the old British habit of queuing. Either queuing to get my stamps in my local post office or buying them at the supermarket till when I pay for my weekly food shop. Darn it!

One thing that I really do like when working on linux is the ability to talk to the program developers about their program and any problems that I'm having with it. A case in point is a program called PyQLogger where I was having problems getting my previously posted entries from my already published blog. Through emails we set up a conversation using Instant Messenger, where the programmer [Eli] was able to talk me through various things, and when I hit a problem he was obviously trying it out at his end because he hit exactly the same problem. I learnt a whole lot more about his program, how to do various things, and he learnt that there was a problem within his program.

The end result is that he has today put out a new version of his program, just over twenty-four hours after our conversation via IM. And the new version seems to have solved the problem too.

But, this is not the only example of me contacting a programs author with some difficulty or problem, and they re-looked at their program and/or code, and made some changes. Now, if you were using the most widespread Operating System in the world (i.e. MicroSoft) and other programs on it, do you honestly believe if you emailed a programs author with difficulties or problems that they would even answer you let alone change their program? From my experience, I think not!

Seen on Slashdot a guy called Brian Whiteman has had a bank of computers listening to as much Christmas music as they could handle, and thus learned their own true meaning of holiday cheer. And then, get this, he's had his computers compose the 'statistically optimal' Christmas music in A Singular Christmas, a freely downloadable MP3 album. Available here and a BitTorrent download from here.

Now, I don't know what this sounds like, but I'm downloading it via BitTorrent at the moment, so .... watch this space.

Whilst looking at the details of a distro [Mepis] that I've used in the past and am still interested in on DistroWatch, I wondered if there was a torrent for Mepis. I couldn't see one listed either on distrowatch or on the home pages of mepis, so I googled for one. And I found this rather good site 'The Linux Mirror Project [aka TLMP for short] which lists torrents for 36 different distro's ... so obviously this is the place to look in the future for a torrent for your favourite and much-needed distro.

Oh, and yes, there is a torrent for Mepis although it does seem sadly out of date

Foiling the Phishers.

Phishing is a growing form of online fraud. It blends old-fashioned confidence scams with innovations in technological trickery. The best way to avoid becoming a victim is to remember that real companies almost never send email asking you to submit any personal data.

Phishers use "spoofed" [fake] emails and fraudulent websites designed to fool you into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, and in America your Social Security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers can fool you.

They often include fancy graphics, trademark symbols, and an authentic-looking email address in the "from" line, but all of these things can be faked easily. One of the easiest ways to tell that it comes from a phisher is if the message tries to scare you into giving up personal and financial information by saying that your account needs to be verified, updated or confirmed. If you think a message might be legitimate, contact the organization by phone or open a new Internet browser window and type in the company's Web address. Do not cut and paste material from suspicious email messages and never reply to a suspected phisher.

Be smart. Be safe. Here's more on how to avoid these phishing scams: PHISHING

Nigerian Scam.

On another fraud front, many people have been contacted by perpetuators of what's known as the Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud or "4-1-9" scheme -- so named after the section of the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud schemes. These are often quite creative as people are discovering.

A large number of victims are enticed into believing they have been singled out from the masses (often by using your family names) to share in some multi-million dollar windfall profits. Don't fall for such frauds either. Read this online public awareness advisory: NIGERIAN SCAM

Recently I've been playing with bittorrent and learning how to use it to my advantage. I know that I downloaded my Fedora Core 3 isos without any problems using bittorrent but I didn't understand what I was doing or how it was working.

I had tried to get bittorrent working from the command line once the FC3 installation was setup and working properly, but I couldn't work out what was needed or not needed, so I eventually installed 'BitTorrent Python Curses GUI' but I still couldn't get it to work as I thought it should work. So I gave up!

And then looking at the knoppix download site forKNOPPIX 3.7 I saw it said 'bittorrent' so I followed the link and clicked on the DL link for the english version of the torrent file. And, to my surprise, up popped a little window asking if I wanted to open it with 'BitTorrent Python wxGTK GUI' to which I clicked 'yes', it then asked where I wanted it to be saved to and I clicked on the folder ........ and it started downloading! Brilliant.

I've now found that it works best of all from Konqueror and doesn't seem to be as integrated with firefox. So for any future downloads that I want to do with bittorrent, Konqueror seems to be the way to go.

BitTorrent links for some linux distros.
http://releases.ubuntu.com/warty/ ubuntu download page
http://torrent.dulug.duke.edu/ Fedora Core 2 & 3
http://www.slackware.com/torrents/ Slackware 10.
http://www.xandros.com/torrent/xandros-201-ocd-installation.zip.torrent Xandros Desktop OS Version 2 Open Circulation Edition

Konqueror Web Shortcuts
A rather interesting article on using konqueror as a web browser and some of the shortcuts you can use for things like googling (is that word a verb now? ), searching the articles of Freshmeat, or SourceForge and also the AltaVista search engine.

The link is here.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimisim come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best and expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenace at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

"The written word is a powerful thing and should be used with responsibility and respect. If you aren't qualified in the topic you are writing about, then just report the facts and keep the editorializing for the armchair in the den."

I don't know who said that but its something that I've found somewhere and stored it away as an interesting, and potentially useful, thought. So I just thought that I'd spread the word a bit.

1. Export all bookmarks in mozilla, firefox and konqueror to your document folder

2. Export all feeds from akregator to your document folder.

3. Move all emails from inbox and sent to respective folders.

4. Copy details of all rpms from syslog to a document so that you know what you've got installed now and what you want to install in the future.

5. Do a total complete backup of the system.

6. Do fresh install if possible rather than upgrade if, and only if, you're already having problems with your pre-upgrade installation. Otherwise upgrade. But, a fresh install is preferable.

7. Install/upgrade.

8. Enjoy.

Backups

I use flexbackup for my backup program in conjunction with another program called 'buffer'. There are rpms available for both of these with Fedora Core 3. I've been using flexbackup all this year with virtually no problems and it fills my needs at the moment, but your take and needs may be different.