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I finally got round to filling my National Service forms online and I just so happened to notice that their website sucked. A lot. What about it sucked? Well…

• First of all, clicking on the enrollment link causes two windows to pop up. One of the windows contains a form that accepts a PIN number and redirects you to your enrollment form, other is a “Highlights Page”.

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I love my HP dv6915nr. It’s not the fastest or prettiest notebook around but it does most of what I want it to and does it quite well. However, one of the things that I hate is the bundled HP Quickplay software, which like the name suggests allows you to access your media very quickly. Version 1.x of QuickPlay was based on XP embedded and had it’s own partition. As a result, it started up real fast and was battery friendly.
Version 2.x,which comes with my notebook, is different creature altogether.

HP QuickPlay

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Around 4am this morning, I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade my Ubuntu installation to Jaunty.(Yes, I know the release date is tomorrow but I just can’t wait anymore). The simplest way to go about that is to hit Alt-F2 and then run:
update-manager -d
That will add the necessary repositories and perform the upgrade. I’m still downloading packages so check back in a few hours for updates.

Update: About a 2/3rds of the way through downloading packages. I hate Ghana Telecom. With a passion.

Update: Finally done! The upgrade process itself went through without a hitch. However, I had a problem with the driver for my Nvidia card not being detected. That was fixed in a jiffy using this guide. So now, I’m rocking the Jaunty release candidate. The only noticeable difference, for me so far, are the notifications. Anyways, let me play with it a little and see what more I can find.

I can’t wait for the final release so I can full upgrade.

I’m on a quest for a mythical object; an aesthetically pleasing desktop that is not too distracting and lets me keep track of my tasks. This is the result of my search so far.

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I wanted to try out the GlassyBleu theme that gets bundled with HP’s version of Ubuntu(MIE) for netbooks. However, after applying the theme, I noticed something was off:

I had been using the Mac4Lin theme previously and as you have probably noticed, OSX’s window decoration layout is a bit unique. To restore the settings back to normal, we need to fire up Gnome Configuration Editor, gconf-editor:
Alt-F2 > gconf-editor > Enter
Now waltz over to the /apps/metacity/general and look for the button_layout key. You need to make sure it’s value is “menu:minimize,maximize,close”. Right click on it and select Edit Key.

That’s it. Your settings should be back to normal.

When you’re working with limited system resources, every bit that can be freed up counts. And if you have do your web development on machine with only 384mb of RAM, you start to be become a bit, um, mercenary about your resources. Running an Apache+PHP+MySQL stack alongside a GNOME desktop (xfce or fluxbox would be better but we all like our little luxuries) , Firefox and a text editor is not my idea of an efficient workspace. When you take the fact that I’ll be working on a wordpress install with about 19k entries, you start getting a sour taste in your mouth. (more…)

I just realized something; computers take up a lot of my time. A couple of friends showed up around noon and I just got back from seeing them off. What happened in the intervening 11 or so odd hours? I have no idea. We just talked about games, played around with Ubuntu a little ( they’re just coming out of the noob stage) and made idiotic jokes. That’s it. For twelve hours.

It made me realize that as much as I love computers, my time is not being used well. I could probably acheive more in less time.Things are not really balanced at the moment so I’m going to have to throttle things a bit (Digg & Cracked especially). Anyway, I’m going to bed. Will post some more when my brain stops making these grinding and rattling sounds.

It’s hard being the “IT” guy or the “computer” guy in Ghana.  Why? Where do I start?

• First of all, people expect you to drop whatever it is you are doing and solve their problem for them (never mind that it’s really important to you). They need their computer/ software working now.
• We really really don’t like the users that ask us to help solve a problem then start making idiotic suggestions

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