Category: General

Ubuntu on Dell Inspiron 8000

I am downloading Ubuntu 5.04 now to install on my old Dell Inspiron 8000 which is I no longer use because XP performance suddenly plummetted to an unusuable state a few months ago. I'll update this post as the Unbuntu experience unfolds. It'll be a while because I am writing code today and can spare only compilation breaks.

After downloading and burning the install CD ISO image, I had moment of doubt so I tried the 'live' version which runs Ubuntu without installing. After listening to the CD drive grind away for ten minutes, I landed on the Ubuntu gnomish desktop. Hmm. Not bad at all.

So now I am in midst of actually installing Ubuntu. The hard drive was wiped a few minutes ago so all I can do is cross my fingers and half-smile nervously.

3 hours after installation

Install took a long time, very long time, long enough for me to watch House of Flying Daggers. This surprised me and made me suspect that XP might not have been the culprit behind the sudden slow problem. My suspicion was confirmed when I ran some programs after the movie/installation. Dog slow. I mean dead dog slow.

When I first ran into the sudden slow down problem, I ran every damn diagnostic program I could find and every one of them said the laptop hardware was just fine. And that made sense because the laptop worked perfectly, as perfectly as paint drying on LCD screen. So I figured it was the butler that did it but I may have resurfaced over an innocent butler.

By googlish luck, I ran across this item in Bay Wolf's Inspiron BIOS FAQ when I went hunting for some clues.

Q: When performing any task that uses a lot of processor power, the fan kicks on. Then the entire system slows to a crawl. Restarting doesn't help. When I turn off the computer, wait a minute and then turn it back on, the system is back to normal. What is causing this?

A: Press Fn+Z together. If the cpu speed returns and the fans turn off or cycle, then it is a BIOS cpu temp reading routine failure. First try resetting the BIOS to factory defaults – Press F9 or Alt+F in the BIOS. If that doesn't stop it, then you will need to upgrade your BIOS. This is especially true for the I8000 and I8100 notebooks. If there is not an updated version of the BIOS, then you will need to downgrade your BIOS to a previous one until a version of the BIOS is released that corrects this problem.

If the problem really is a BIOS cpu temp reading routine failure, you can trigger the problem in the offending BIOS by either suspend or hibernate the notebook, then return. The fans will come on and cpu usage goes to 100% – things run VERY slow.

So I pressed Fn+Z. Just like that, the laptop was back to it's old self. I wasn't sure if I should be jumping with joy or rushing outside in search of some Dell engineers to strangle. Oh, well. It's a long mad dash to Texas anyway and, without this CPU temperature reading bug in the BIOS, I wouldn't have had the chance to blow away a hard drive full of expensive software nailed to the machine and wouldn't have tried Ubuntu. Small blessings.

To make the long story shorter and save you the story about the unreadable mountain of diskettes, I installed the latest BIOS and now Ubuntu is ready to inspire more whining and pining in the near future.

Hwae – Korean-style Sashimi

I love to eat raw fish. While I usually have to settle for sashimi, what I really crave is korean-style sashimi called hwae. I just got the craving for some hwae but it's difficult to find a good restaurant that serves it in the Bay Area.

This is what a plate of hwae looks like. While that looks like a lot of fish, a plate that size is usually shared among 3-4 adults. Cost wise, a plate like like what you see above costs around $80-120 these days.

Unlike sashimi, hwae is made with live fish which means you get to pick the fish you want before sitting down. Spicy sauce, garlic, hot pepper also makes hwae quite memorable, if you know what I mean. A plate of that and a few bottles of chungha (fine korean rice wine) is what I want for dinner every night. Yum!

Still Here

I am still here baby, working my ass off, hopping across languages, platforms, and markets. Two weeks ago was all .NET, last week was Java, next few weeks will be all COM/Win32/ATL/C++ for a couple of clients as well as myself. I am hoping to book a Ruby on Rails project after that for some bonus fun.

Zopa

Scott Loftesness points to Zopa. Outstanding. It's like my Market-based Credit Card idea minus the card. If they turned themselves into a credit card issuer with individualized rates, it would be just about same although their marketing speak is from the bank perspective (Richard Duvall's background). While I had the same idea 7 years ago, I didn't have the balls to turn it into reality. Zopa folks did. Wow. One of the balls is named Benchmark Capital. LOL.

Empty

Ever wake up one day and everything around you looks empty of meaning? It's as if my Meaning of Life (MoL?) fell out of a hole in my soul. This happens to me once every few years. It's an aweful feeling and I have no idea what brings it on or dispells it. Religion could probably sew up that hole nice and tight but I am alergic to it unfortunately. I hope it doesn't last too long this time.

Back from Camping

Just got back from 3 days of camping at the New Brighton Beach in San Jose. Campsites were so so and morning weather was foggy and windy but the beach is great and weather is great from noon til evening. Also, it's only a 45 minute drive to Monterey. We typically just loiter around our campsite but we had my close Korean friend's family with us so we went to Monterey to enjoy the seafood, shops, and the aquarium.

Anyway, I am tired now and have a large pile of work still to burn away so it'll be light blogging for a few days.

Open for Contracts Again

My current primary client for the past year and a half is now airborne and climbing fast so I think my equity is reasonably safe enough for me to move on. This means I'll have about 100~125 hours per month open for offsite contracts within two weeks. Let me know if you are interested in the keeping me occupied. While I can plow ahead like a one-man army, I prefer having a small army at my fingertip. Part equity contracts are welcome if your venture is promising enough.

Second London Bombing

It looks like all four copycat terrorists might have gotten away although one man wearing a backpack was seen being taken into custody. In at least two of the incidents, an asian man was seen running. In one incident, a man's rucksack exploded and the man cursed. I wonder why no one jumped the bastards? Anyway, looks like their bomb maker screwed up something.

Update: One was chased by people but not sure what happened afterward.

Pause and Korean News Podcast

I've got to dig out of a work pile I am under currently so blogging will be less frequent over the next couple of weeks. Camping next week too.

After that, I am going to give podcasting a try. At this point, I think podcasts of Korean news I read every morning (in the relative sense). Most foreign news never makes it over the language barrier despite all the technologies and social networking we have to day. It won't be straight news though. Rather, selection and interpretation will be biased by my views.

Atomic Pedantics

Apparently, Atom 1.0 syntax spec is now at the end of the runway. Whether it takes flight or loudly ignored, they don't seem to realize that pedantic assertions like the below undermines their work:

The RSS 2.0 specification is copyrighted by Harvard University and is frozen. No significant changes can be made and it is intended that future work be done under a different name; Atom is one example of such work. – RSS 2.0 and Atom Compared

They have taken words in the roadmap section of the RSS spec and used it to portray RSS 2.0 as a deadend road when they are fully aware that those very words came into existance to encourge those who were undermining RSS 2.0 to either vent their harmful creativity elsewhere or redirect them to more constructive activities such as building modules like Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo are doing now.

Under payload comparison between Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0:

Escaped HTML is ugly…RSS 2.0 cannot contain actual well-formed XML markup…

Sillyness followed by misinformation. HTML is not XML which is why HTML had to be escaped. They also failed to note that there are XHTML embedding issues.

Under Digital Signature/Encryption:

RSS 2.0 can be encrypted or signed like any other web content, if treated as a bag of bits.
Rules for applying standard XML Encryption and XML Digital Signature on entries are included in Atom 1.0. Alternatively, the feed can be encrypted or signed, like RSS 2.0, as a bag of bits.

More half-truths. Both mentioned specs can be used in RSS 2.0 just fine.

Under Deployment:

RSS 2.0 is widely deployed and Atom 1.0 not at all.

Well, I am happy to see that they just need to grow up instead of needing therapy.

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p dir=”ltr”>Most of the differences can be easily added to RSS 2.0 as modules and the remainders are meaningless in practice. If they want Atom to take off, they need to introduce equivalent RSS 2.0 modules. Do they realize that? Their display of pedantics makes me doubt it.