Protons, Neutrons, Electrons!

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

A mini adventure

Well, I did it again... mess up my computer that is.
I was getting fed up with my Kernel, which was a 2.4.31 linux kernel, not hotplugging my usb harddrive properly so I compiled a 2.6.15 kernel instead. Something wasn't right with the new kernel but because I'm a dumbass I hadn't made a backup of my old one (thinking that it's still on the Slackware install disc anyway...). Well I tried to fix it using Knoppix and failed. I felt a bit better when I discovered that Steve couldn't convice it to work either.
So I set about finding something new to try, because if I reinstalled Slackware I'd only have to go through a ton of shit trying to sort out a new kernel again. Problem is... I only have one CD drive in my computer so I couldn't use Knoppix to write a new boot disc so I decided to try SUSE 10.0 OSS, which was on the cover of a magazine a few months back. So far I'm impressed. I didn't think I'd like it actually but it seems to be fast enough; I just tried glxgears and got 2045fps, which isn't too bad considering I'm in KDE and I've got music playing and 2 torrents incoming and I'm chatting on Kopete. I'll see if I can get more out of it later. On Slackware I used to average 2600fps, so it's not a massive difference. Screenshots to follow, obviously.. but I haven't changed anything yet really and a standard OpenSUSE screenshot can be found on their website.

Monday, March 27, 2006

New toy...


I bought a flugel horn on Friday. I was in Bristol with my mum and I popped into Trevor Jones Brass and Woodwind shop just to see if they had any sencond hand flugel horns. There was one there that I liked so much that I bought it! It is an Olds, which is a good solid make and it is really free blowing.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Random?

Something I've contemplated occasionally is the human ability to be random, or lack of it. I usually that if someone attempts to act in a random way then they'd simply do something that the people around them would not see as normal behaviour. This, however, is not random; it is just un-usual. I have found that in an attempt to be surreal that I have only produced some kind of story or situation that simply doesn't make sense rather than something that is possible and truely bizarre.
I have chosen to mention this now because I was testing a calcultor program on my computer and in an attempt to pick random numbers I chose numbers that were related to each other.
I typed the following:
(312-133)*(179/27)
When I typed it I was completely unaware that 312-133 is infact 179, and that 179 is a multiple of 27. I found this result surprising and worth making a note of.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Guess what...


...here's an update:

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

You are Musa Ibrahim.  YOU ARE AN ACCOUNTANT WITH THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORP. YOU WISH TO REMIT $21 MILLION TO MY COMPANY FOR SAFEKEEPING.  YOU ENJOY BICYCLING AND TYPING IN ALL-CAPS.
Which Nigerian spammer are You?

Which Website are You?

You are homestarrunner.com You are funny and animated.  You have a large following, but many people still don't get you. You are flashy. You talk funny.
Which Website are You?

Interview

I had an interview for the Graduate Teaching Programme yesterday. It went well and I've be short-listed. I've got another interview next Thursday. Safe.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Kool Desktop Environment

I don't know if you can tell (lol) but I've been quite into KDE lately.
I didn't used to be this way. For ages I was a gnome user but used to switch between that and minimalistic window managers like IceWM and Fluxbox. I was always in search of the perfect window manager and spent hours and hours configuring and tweaking desktop menus and playing with file managers but was never particularly satisfied. I didn't like the idea of KDE with all it's integrated programs and huge Control Center and I was also put off thinking that it would be very RAM consuming. I spent some time over the last year playing with various different distros, e.g. Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, SourceMage and even tried FreeBSD for a week, and during this time I've always been able to turn to KDE to get things running the way I wanted. Without sifting through setup documention and configuration scripts it's been the easiest way to get everything running quickly and smoothly. Another important factor that really swayed me in the end was Konqueror. I think it's an excellent app to use for file management, FTP, and web browsing all in one! (I do also use Firefox a lot though) I figured that if I'm going to be using Konqueror and loading all of the stuff that it needs in the background then I may as well use KDE.
Since retreating back to the trusty distribution of Slackware I've been using KDE solidly and having gotten used to hunting down kwin themes and gui styles I'm really pleased with all of the crazy stuff you can do, and how easy it is to make look really nice.
Recently I found a link on wikipedia to the original forum post of the guy who thought up KDE (in those days he called it the 'Kool Desktop Environment'). Take a look.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Korilla!


I found some icons on KDE-look.org that are a copy of the gnome icon theme "Gorilla" and a nice couple backdrops, here's how it all looks.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

KDE as Gnome


I felt like making KDE look a bit GTK-ish so armed with the QtCurve theme and Klearbox kwin theme I've created this.
The second hdd (sda1) is my new 160Gb external hard drive, nice!

Monday, March 06, 2006

Kids

I was at school today, (I do work experience in a school as I'm aiming to do a Graduate Teaching course next year) and one of the children said that Miles Davis's So What "lacks passion" (in those exact words) and I was quite shocked by it. I'm quite used to comments like "I don't like it because it's old" or simply "It's crap", etc, but this opinion really put a damper on my day for some reason and I'm not sure why.
I don't particularly care if people don't want to listen to and appreciate the same music as me, but for some for some reason this choice of words really disturbed me.
I guess I'm just a music geek.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Fame! I want to live forever...

Today I had a rehearsal for a show I'm playing in in a couple of weeks. It was really fun. I was a bit worried that my playing wouldn't be up to standard, but I was fine. I really enjoyed it and it's made me feel really good. I love playing music, it's what I'm good at.
Safe.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Visionary huh?

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness.
Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connected to your soul.
You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable.
Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings.

You have great vision and can be very insightful.
In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself.
Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend.
You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer.

Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

Black and White


Just found this old screenshot on my website, I think it's quite a good effect. I had it set up so that when you moved the mouse over the icons they turned colour. Nice.