The Lair of The Dark Knight

I recently came into ownership, for the princely sum of £0.00, of a Dell Inspiron 2600 laptop. It has a 1GHz Celeron processor, a 20GB IDE hard drive, and 512mb RAM. Given it's age I decided against sticking Windows on it, especially as my experiences with Windows 7 have soured my perception of all other versions of Windows, electing to install Ubuntu 9.10.

( Geeky geek inside. )

Addendum: From what I've found "nomodeset" disables the KMS (Kernel Mode Settings) of the new linux kernels.
From UbuntuWiki: "Kernel mode-setting (KMS) shifts responsibility for selecting and setting up the graphics mode from X.org to the kernel. When X.org is started, it then detects and uses the mode without any further mode changes. This promises to make booting faster, more graphical, and less flickery."

So my plan now is to correct the KMS so that it loads the correct modules/settings.

As I've got the time to fart about with this kinda stuff I've decided that in the next couple of weeks I'm going to replace the mobo in my file server with something a little more robust. I'm currently using my Mini-ITX box as the file server, but even after placing the kit inside of an ATX case I still need board expandability for more drives.

So I've decided to use an ATX board instead (AMD Athlon 939) which will allow for more drives on board and with expansion cards. What this does mean is that I can use the Mini-ITX machine for something else, which I'm not sure of just yet. Perhaps a Linux Media Centre?

Tonight I'll be over at V's with Greyscar to record another episode of R4nger5 Radio, so I may not be online tonight.

I'll also be getting a new case for my home server box; upgrading from a shuttle case to a mini-tower (the mobo is uATX, I think) which will give more physical space for hard drives. Currently I have two HDDs in it and I aim to put more in as required.

The box, named "alpha", is currently running Samba server, sharing files across the network to Linux and Windows machines (including the XBox, which runs as an entertainment machine). With all the media I have hard disk space is at a premium, so the physical ability to add more drives is a Good Thing^TM.

It looks like it's going to happen.

In case you haven't already heard, Valve recently advertised a position for a Senior Software Engineer to "Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform."

Fuck. Yes. :D

Went to cavebearranting's place last night to help him install, and get to grips with, Ubuntu. He's quite impressed with what it will do "out of the box"; e.g. browsing Windows network shares (samba is installed by default).

I'm still waiting on my boiler suit. I ordered it last Friday and it's still not arrived, although they've just taken the payment in the last couple of days. Hopefully it'll arrive soon. :)

I've found a nice big plastic side release buckle which I'm going to use to make a leg strap for my thigh pouch.

I'm looking forward to this all being completed. :D

EDIT: Mental Note: Need Navy Blue thread.

For those of you who haven't seen Beryl yet, check this: Windows Vista Aero vs Ubuntu + Beryl.

My god, it's full of awesome. :D

It seems that Distant Thunder has changed it's location from Swynnerton to Anglesey, which is a BIG differnce travel wise. Luckily I've got some backup transport thanks to the trains and omega256.

Tuesday night I installed X on "mother". ralesk, it only took 40 minutes to emerge completely. ;)
I was going to work on "mother" some more last night, but as I had a stonking headache I decided to go to bed early. Tonight I'm going to install Xfce and get working on encrypting my home partition.

If I can get EVE running through WINE then I'm probably gonna blitz my laptop and install Gentoo on that as well.

That's all for now. More as required.

There's something quite magical about leaving for work and seeing that frost has attached itself to every available surface outside, glimmering in the sun light, and the waning gibbous moon still quite high in the bright sky.

In Furry TV Doc related news I heard nothing from the media rep last night, so unless I call her again tonight I think it's safe to assume that either she doesn't want/need to talk to me anymore or the doc is not going forward. Considering how anxious she sounded to get this done as quickly as possible I'm a bit dubious as to her motives now.

With regards to my room I've finalised the floor plan now; I know exactly where everything will go, and as soon as I fit the curtain rail and move the desk/computer I'm getting Gentoo up and running, no doubt about it. I'm really not a Dual-Boot fan as it seems such a waste of time to have to boot into another OS just to do something else, but when I get my laptop in three weeks time I might start using that as my Windows box and go completely Linux with my main one.

So I went to the Leeds Pagan Moot last night. It was as informal as I had expected it to be, which was reassuring, and there were some really good discussions. Unfortunately I'm still feeling none the wiser about Wicca/Paganism, so methinks it's time I started looking for books to read about the subject.

As for the personal question "Am I Wicca/Pagan?", I can't answer that yet. I still need to learn a lot more about the basic faith before I can make a full decision, right now I'm just an interested person. :)
Having said that the typical "This is me" things have been happening, like many coincidences relating to Wicca/Pagan happening in a very short space of time.

All in all this requires more study before I can make a decision, but what I have seen/read has only really whet my appetite. :9

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Due to attending the moot, however, I was unable to decomission Shodan. I'll do that tonight around the other chores I need to do (laundry, dishes, etc). What follows is a step-by-step guide to what I'll do. ( Click here to read )

More later!