June 13

Extra Joss: Apple Black Currant

Among the numerous energy drinks available in the market, the only thing I have tried is the “Extra Joss” brand mainly because of the packaging. It is very convenient as it comes in a sachet that you just add to a cold glass of water.

The last time I drank one was years ago when I had to stay with my mom in the hospital when she had a stroke episode. I would like to think that the energy drink gave me some boost in that week long “endurance” and little sleep. The citrus taste and fizzy texture was a very pleasant experience.

A couple of days ago I saw the TV ad that there were two new flavors: club soda and apple black currant. I have been wimpy and stressed for the previous week and really tired so I bought 3 packs (one of each, including the original) from the convenience store at the ground floor of the office.

The first I tried was the “apple black currant” variant because I don’t know what “club soda” really tastes like. I got a black mug from the pantry and labored with opening the sachet. In the defense of the packaging, this is really stupidity on my part. I saw two dots in the middle that I took as perforation marks so I tried to open it from there. Only after thinking it through was I able to spy the real perforation marks near the corner. 🙂

Back to the preparation, I dunked the contents on the mug and added some cold water from the dispenser. The powder fizzled so I gave it ten seconds to settle down somewhat before drinking. I first tasted apple but it might be because that is the first smell that registered in my brain. About halfway with the drink the bitter taste hit me head-on that I nearly spat the liquids in my mouth. I just swallowed what I already have in my mouth and then inspected the contents of the mug. I was surprised to see that some of the powder was still solid at the bottom. I don’t remember seeing this insolubility before. I added more water and swirled the mug a couple of time to shake things up. When I drank the remaining energy drink the taste was already too diluted but the bitterness was still there.

I am no longer sleepy so the drink must be working, but I don’t think I will try the black currant variant anymore. Once is enough. I am used to drinking black currant flavored drinks (Absolut vodka comes into mind /lol) but I can’t say that they taste bitter. Hopefully the club soda variant is going to give me a better tasting experience.

ciao!

Category: Reviews | LEAVE A COMMENT
June 10

Pesky CD/USB Auto-play

I imagine that at first the Auto-play feature is the best thing since sliced bread. I think I first encountered it when I used Win98(?) wherein if you pop in a CD with the autoplay file it will start the named executable which is usually the main installer of the disc.

Then come WinXP (or Win2K, I can’t remember) wherein some brilliant developer/designer proposed to take it one step further, by making sure an autoplay dialog pops up to display a list of possible actions whenever the user puts in a media in the CD/DVD drive OR if a USB storage device is plugged-in.

I find that feature as very irritating, especially since I am a keyboard-centric user and I have a multi-partition USB HDD enclosure. I have four partitions in my 120GB WD driver so it means every time I use it in Windows I have to contend with eight windows (4 drive scanning dialog boxes, and the actual autoplay window). Somewhere along the four autoplay window is an option to set this behavior off (Do nothing+Do this every time) but somehow it is very elusive so I end up hitting the escape key vigorously to cancel these autoplay actions. These combative behavior does not always work since sometimes the windows do not have focus.

Even for DVD and CD media, I don’t like this option even if my next action will be to open an explorer and navigate to the inserted media. I don’t like it because the pop-out windows by their nature interrupts my train of thought. I prefer that the media be read in the background and I will press WinKey+E to launch an explorer.

So last night I finally got fed up and searched for a way to turn off that irritating feature. It was very easy actually and got a lot of hits; the keywords I used were “disable autoplay windows”. In a nutshell the steps are:

  1. In the run command, execute “gpedit.msc” which launches the group policy editor.
  2. Navigate to the User Configuration->Administrative Templates->System item. If you want this to be system wide, use the Computer Configuration instead. My wife may want this feature so I opted for the user-limited settings.
  3. Double-click on the “Turn off Autoplay” and set it to true.

Presto! No more autoplay nag boxes for me. I think KDE also have a counterpart for this in the kded(aemon) but I use XFCE so I don’t really have this problem when I am in Linux.

[update]

ciao!

Category: Non-FLOSS | 2 Comments on Pesky CD/USB Auto-play
June 6

The problem is mine alone.

Scenario At Work: A required resource service is not functioning properly.

Manager: Get somebody to fix it. ASAP!
Me: Will do.
[Me contacts internal support]
Me: Did we change something in the configuration? Product X is borked.
Internal Support: Nope. Everything is dandy. Try contacting the provider.
[Me contacts provider’s support hot line]
Me: Your service is not working properly. Please check.
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hotline where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). We’ll ask our technical team to look at it. Here is your cookie reference number.

[after an hour]
Manager: Well?
Me: (looking up from the pile of tasks being worked on) Err, ABC support hasn’t called back yet. Ill follow it up.
Manager: Should have done that eons ago…
Me: right! (whispering inside my head: and i am just twiddling my thumbs here… )

[calls ABC hot line]
Me: Im calling regarding reference number 123456. Any updates?
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hot line where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). Tech team has stated that they don’t see any problem with your service. It must be something internal (read between the lines: you are a stupid customer. all of your problems are your imagination. ITS NOT OUR FAULT, ITS YOURS). Please check your lines again.
Me: [groan]

[calls internal support]
Me:ABC said there is no problem from their side. Are you sure there isn’t any test that we need to do to isolate this?
Internal Support: We already executed all tests. Everything is still dandy.
Me: (whispering in my head: Oh crap) Uhhh, ok.

[puts down phone, somebody speaks up from behind]
Manager: Well?
Me: (startled) uhh, wait a second.

[pulls open the drawer, takes out the gun, points it in my temple and pulls the trigger]

Problem solved.

Note: Manager, ABC company, and Internal support are all fictitious characters. But they represent somebody real though may not be their literal counterparts.

ciao!

Category: Garbage, Work | LEAVE A COMMENT
June 1

Feedback: CD-R King LSY709 Laptop Cooler

My laptop developed some problems late 2007 which causes it to freeze regardless if I have Linux or Windows running. I initially thought it has something to do with the installed operating systems but reinstalling various Linux distributions didn’t help. My initial suspect was a heat problem. I turned Lala upside down and proceeded to vacuum the bottom side with the help of a couple of toothpicks to help remove the lint (and two years of use can accumulate a lot of those!).

LSY709 Cooler - Courtesy of CDRKing

Last February I walked by a CDR-King shop and decided to get a laptop cooling pad. The models available are only the slider ones which I don’t want. I wanted something that I can use as a prop stand while doing portable computing in the bed. The only non-slider model they have is the LSY709 so it is the model I got after being assured that it can accommodate a 15 inch laptop. If I remember correctly this peripheral is given a 7-day warranty.

First off, the cooler pad is able to hold Lala but not by much. The laptop is protruding by almost an inch on both sides, and 1.5″ at the hinge side. I don’t think the shop contains any cooler that is bigger so this is not something that can be helped. The pad’s construction is slanted which raises the back portion higher. It also has two plastic “stands” at the top corners that elevates the placed laptop a little further and gives a little air pocket between the pad’s metal surface. Overall the pad still fits in my laptop bag quite comfortably but I am anxious on the bare edges because even if they are smooth they may still rip the padding if placed incorrectly and forcefully,

One thing that is not shown in the site is the view from below so here it is:

The wires are pretty open which can be something to worry since I want to put this in my lap. Fortunately the fans are protected by grills so there is no possibility of my leg skin getting into contact if I place it on my lap while it is in operation. But the wires is still ugly as it is something that looks like what I would have done if I constructed it myself.

This cooler, as can be seen from the image posted in the cdrking site, has three quiet fans in the middle that pulls the heat from the laptop placed on top. Unfortunately my laptop’s bottom vents are on the top portion near the hinge so they don’t really line up. Again this is something that I don’t think can be helped because I reviewed all the cooler pads in the site (at the time) and all of them has the cooler in the middle. I think it is the laptop design (a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro V7100) that is at fault here. I need to check the other laptops if the placement of the heat vents are in the middle. Nevertheless the air pocket between the laptop bottom and the cooler pad surface is enough to produce a swirling ventilation.

I have used the pad whenever the laptop is in use. The elevation works great especially when I am placing the laptop down on the bed. As everybody who owns a laptop should know (yes Boi, that includes you), putting laptops on top of fabric or paper is not recommendes as they are soft enough to block the vents. The cooler pad gives the laptop enought elevation that even if the fans are blocked, the laptop vents are still free to swirl the air around. I haven’t experienced any lock-ups yet.

Now the bad parts:

  • While the fans are quiet, their output must not be that strong. I can barely feel the airflow when I switch on the fans.
  • The bare metal approach is not comfortable if you put it in your lap. I get dent marks on my legs whenever I forget to put a throw pillow on the edge that touches my skin. The laptops weight (~2.5 kilos) might also have something to do with it.
  • Shabby wiring. As of today, the fans are dead. I think I can see where the wires got damaged and may be able to fix it if I get the time, tools and inclination. Right now this pad is only good for elevation. 🙁

This pad is now due for replacement. Will I get the same model? Probably not. It was a value for what I paid for it but I think there might be something better out there that provides the right balance of price and functionality.

ciao!

Category: Gadget, Reviews | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 29

Third time is a charm: Mdv Spring 2008.1 is in full swing.

Since the start of this week I have been struggling with the installation of the latest Mandriva release which I have just finished downloading via torrent. I even posted a passing comment about it in the unofficial Mandriva Users board. Since I have already gone through two succeeding installations that failed, I stated that if the third time didnt push through then I would really consider looking at another distro for Lala (my laptop).

The first failed installation has something to do with a recurring error in the wifi prism54 loading that made it impossible to login. I don’t have the exact error with me but it has something to do with the eth0 not being in a final state, and the IRQ channels might be too busy. The second attempt wherein I tried to only install the bare minimum of X package borked the whole X installation. I installed Mdv again yesterday and this time just selected the KDE installation. If this one is also going to fail then I wouldn’t waste my time manually choosing the packages to be installed. I left the installation running while we had our dinner. When I came back the installation was already showing the root account and user configuration window.

At the final configuration screen, I opted to just configure the ethernet connection and setting it to start at boot but not at that specific point. I just want Lala to boot up and then I would configure the wireless card using ndiswrapper since I already have the Fujitsu provided drivers in a CDRW. Taking the installation DVD out of the drive bay, I crossed my fingers for the first reboot.

For the remainder of the boot sequence, I was pretty much holding my breath until I got to the KDM screen. I entered my user account and waited for KDE to kick in. The good news is that everything seems to be ok but it was taking quite long for the KDE startup sequence to complete. I think I waited around 5 minutes which is not good. I noticed that KDE has started by default a lot of daemons that starts in the taskbar How very MS-like so the first task was to remove them one by one until only the clock and the network applet remained in the status bar area. I don’t really understand why I did that since I plan on replacing KDE with XFCE4, my new favorite desktop that replaced fluxbox.

I put in the CDRW disc and copied wireless card Windows driver in /tmp. Weird thing is that ark is not able to extract the file so I ended up doing a manual unzip operation in the command line. This is not a good start but I can live with it. I proceeded to configure the wireless card using the network applet. The package manager asked for the DVD installation media since it needs to fetch the ndiswrapper package so I swapped in the DVD+RW in the drive and let the urpmi front-end do its thing. After a minute I was asked to locate the Windows driver’s INF file so I navigated to the /tmp directory. After a few default choices, I was shown the Wifi access points in my area which listed only my wireless router ( I live in a pretty low-tech neighborhood. 😀 ). After a few test, I was greeted with a message that my network has been properly configured.

Hurray! But still I have no connection. A quick ifconfig command later and I saw that I have a wlan0 device but it doesnt have an IP. I just issued a quick dhclient wlan0 and voila: a wlan0 device with an attached IP address! I took advantage of the situation and downloaded the latest packages in the Internet as well as Krusader and XFCE4. Everything finished at around 12AM so I made sure everything was finished and halted the machine.

Tonight I booted up Lala and pressed the escape key to see the bootup messages in the background. In the network start phase, there was an error in the “Set Encode” portion of the wifi loading so I was pretty disappointed. I logged in using the XFCE4 session and was inside my desktop in less than a minute after I entered my username and password. My biggest prize was waiting inside: the top XFCE4 panel has the network applet and it is showing 3 out of 4 bars. My laptop is connected automatically to my wireless router! SUCCESS!

I am now writing this post using my spanking new Mdv installation. I am still amazed that Mandriva is consistent in getting the middle trackpad buttons working while I am struggling to do it in Windows. I just need a NAS server and everything should be set for the file coordination between Lala and Leo (my desktop Archlinux installation).

I am happy even if I am already sleepy due to lack of enough rest. Anybody who wants a copy of the latest Mandrake DVD (Free Edition), let me know but you will have to meet me in Robinson’s Pioneer during office days. 🙂

ciao!

Category: FLOSS | 2 Comments on Third time is a charm: Mdv Spring 2008.1 is in full swing.
May 29

Goosefraba….

Just venting.

I think I am nearing the “warning” levels of my stress tolerance. I am now easily affected by the inconsideration of everyday strangers. I haven’t been awake for more than 4 hours and my temper already flared with:

  • The jeepney driver who stopped in the middle of the road, checked out the “prospective” passenger in the sidewalk, and then start again when I was overtaking his vehicle and directly in line with his vehicle. This is one of the reasons why I hate driving. This person needs to be hit by a “driving for dummies” bat.
  • In a tight two lane street (the breaker of a floodway circuit) that already have a lot of vehicles parked smatteringly on each side, a pedicab driver stopped in the middle, and then exhanged a long bantering with a pedestrian who he has just passed by. Here is your stupid and inconsiderate sign, and a generous amount of honking as a bonus.
  • The elevator going up to the office floor only has a few passengers since it is still early. I normally go to the back since I dismount at the next to the top floor being serviced by the elevators but since this time I was near the door. In the floor before my stop, a female rider carrying 3 bags: a typical oversized female handbag, a paper bag, and a laptop backpack, alighted. The problem was that the backpack was only slung using one of the straps so it was dangling and it hit me. Since the woman was from the same company as I am (we are occupying that floor also), I just smiled and raised my right hand in a typical open-palm pinoy fashion to sign “no worries, everything is alright”. Then the frigging woman (I refuse to call her a lady), stopped when she was out of the elevator door, and gave me the evil eye. Here is your stupid and inconsiderate sign, if you have been careful to make sure you carry your belongings securely then your heavy laptop bag won’t have dangled and hit me. And I don’t care if you are a manager, you deserve to be hit by a large etiquette bat in the head.
  • The Indian support engineer handling my ticket that got redirected to the India support team (WHY oh WHY?). My tickets are usually handled by the Manila server team who are much more competent at this. Even with me painstakingly exerting every effort to make my ticket description as detailed and complete as possible, the engineer had the gall to send me an email with this thinly veiled ultimatum:

    After reviewing the ticket, it has been determined that some information will have to be verified from you before we proceed with your request. Please refer to the questions/clarifications below:
    1) Managers approval required
    2) Kindly let us know in which project id needs to be created

    or reply to this email with your answer/s on or before <28-05-2008>.

    Your reply is very important to us as we aim to provide quality services through better management of tickets. Please note that failure to provide the information needed on or before the date mentioned above may result in ticket closure.

    Why am I mad? Because I have attached the approval in the original ticket, all of the details are already in the description, and I created the ticket yesterday (>>May 28, 2008< <) at 7PM (GMT+2), received the reply at 9:45PM (GMT+2). Apologies to all of my friends in the support business but this one needs to be bashed by a big “reading comprehension” bat.

As they say in the street: Ang aga-aga, pinapainit nyo ang ulo ko! (It’s still early and you are already testing my patience!)

File system consistency check you all. 🙁

Goosefraba… Goosefraba…

Now I feel better.

ciao!

Category: Rubbish, Work | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 28

Why I am leaning towards the MSI Wind

The news bombardment on the ultraportable front is pretty fierce with a new Eee killer competitor being announced weekly. I am still waiting for the Acer version to come out but my choices right now are between the MSI Wind and Eee PC 901. The HP mini-note comes a distant third because it does not have the latest power-conscious chip (Intel Atom or Via Isaiah) so battery life can barely squeezed to 3 hours.

MSI has just released two beta prototypes to lucky Taiwanese press and msiwind.net has published a copy of the review. If I am going by that user review then the only drawbacks currently known is the jutting card reader, and the slight heating up of the trackpad since it is placed near or on top of the hard disk drive. I am not counting the decision of equipping it with a normal HDD instead of a SSD drive since like the review says, I treat my laptop as a precious thing. I don’t think I have even dropped my 3Kg laptop anyway.

Shipping date and price is still unannounced and expansys.net has taken down the pre-order page for it but the Wind was priced at US$610. Hopefully the real price will be lower but unless Eee 901 has a great feature up its sleeves then the Wind is going to win in blowing my money away. 🙂

ciao!

Category: Gadget | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 23

Growing Old and Growing Up

The Philippine Linux User Group (PLUG) mailing list currently has a thread that (according to the archives.free.net.ph) is 44 replies strong. The thread started about a query on how to increase one’s technical portfolio (I assume for job interviews, but it is still too early to trust my memory) but, in typical internet forum style, morphed into opinions and lamentations that the PLUG lists are getting boring and losing the old hands.

Various comments were put forward but the reasons that stuck with me were that (1) the usability state of Linux has evolved that solutions to majority of technical issues are just a Google away, and (2) the old posters have moved on to the pressing need of their real life.

I don’t see myself much of a contributor but I have been a member of the list for more than five years and I am not posting as much as did. I don’t even police the lists anymore but I have always attributed that to the reduction of the number of PLUG mailing lists, the members sharing the policing responsibility, and the members actually knowing better than to post off-topic questions. The last two signifies that the PLUG mailing list members have grown up and the new members are savvy enough to respect proper list netiquette or they are afraid to post, whichever you want to believe in. 😀

People might not grow up proportionally to the rate they are growing old but they will grow up nonetheless even if they don’t realize it. The PLUG thread sparked an eureka moment, I am growing up. I just noticed that I now often sign my blog comments using my nickname instead of just “ramfree17”, and if left unchecked I am using proper capitalization on those comments which is a far cry from the “all low-caps” rule that I was imposing when I was younger 😉 . The downside if it can be called that is that I am losing some of my idealism in favor of pragmatism. I was always in favor of pragmatism since childhood but I guess right now the pragmatic part of me is consuming more of the idealistic share.

An email reply jokingly contributed that the “golden years” of PLUG might have already passed but it is time for the new blood to step up. Whenever I hear the term “golden years” I remember this snippet from Mary Schmich’s essay “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” (made popular as Baz Luhrman’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”):


Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

ciao!

Category: FLOSS, Rubbish | 2 Comments on Growing Old and Growing Up