Decaying hut

Another sign of a blog left to decay and to grow grass to another level of usefulness. Thanks to the art of trying to look busy and pushing thing to tomorrow.
It really takes time and effort. I can assure you on that one.
Now ladies and gentleman, a hand of applause please.

Puppy and IBM love tip

If you are a nomad like me. Then may be you have carried around that puppy Linux Cd, for you never know the next beast (computer) you will meet. I discovered puppy doesnt’ play well with most IBM’s especially those ThinkCentre things (have you ever met one?). The Graphic cards have their own way of showing some love to puppy! When running the xorg wizard, they will inform you there is no configuration that works.

There is a quick fix for it. Just look carefully at the first line that is the 800*600 resolution, if the wizard says its okay, just select it, it will log you in to a 1024*768(It has worked for me many times. Unless you want a higher resolution than that then don’t bother but for my case,I just want to edit documents and some browsing. That resolution works for me. I believe resolutions higher than that should be left for the eagles and kites and the movie buffs.)

In case there is no working resolution showing, Just select the Xvesa, you will manually select the resolution and bam, you are in business. I have used it and I don’t have complains.

LUG meeting: venue changed

The venue for the May 29th Meeting will no longer be EACOSS.

The new venue will be SecondLife’s Education Centre which is round the corner from the UMA Showgrounds on Ntinda Road.

You can get the details at http://linux.or.ug/node/8

Honestly, I am trying to understand the directions “round the corner” (I know the showroom). I hope u get there. Or u can shoot some mail somewhere and ask.

A special effect: Nollywood vs Hollywood

A cow speaking in a Hollywood movie is more realistic than a woman quarrelling (the most used *special effect*) in a Nollywood movie.

LUG Meeting

On May 29th, the LUG will have a monthly meeting at EACOSS in Nakawa.

I have been waiting for some time for the topics but it doesn’t matter anyway. Linux is broad and anything can work.

If your are near on that day, just pop in. There is a big sign post outside, so you can’t get lost. My tip is, don’t even hesitate. Step through the door like you do it everyday.
Another thing that should be handy is having a couple of blank CD’s because you never know, your wish can come true.

Let’s meet that day.

LUG

Last Friday had a surprise for me. I was strolling around the institute and bang, on the wall I saw a notice. It was LUG meeting. I didn’t know we had a Linux user group in Uganda. I had no other option but enter. Cool or so, I thought.

It became more hotter and interesting. The topic was Nagios (the network monitoring tool) I was amazed with what it can actually do. I liked the network topology display. Of course that means we fed our eyes and ears as well.

I got to play with Ubuntu 9.10 ha ha ha. Somebody had downloaded it and then came the burning craze (“Who would like a copy?”) I am am still waiting for my CDs to arrive via the post. I get ubuntu via shipit.com. Just believe me the post office is still faster than if I tried downloading the ISO via these snail networks that I use nowadays!

I just wonder how I didn’t know about this LUG before. Here is the website http://linux.mountbattenhosting.net/ We were informed its going to change to linux.or.ug very soon.

Lug logo

If you are in Uganda and you want to learn something about Linux, just sign up at the website. Of course, you can still come without signing up. The meeting was at EACOSS at UICT Nakawa and I hope the next meeting will be there. Just pop in there and feed your ears and that thing in between them.

In the name of social networking

I truly, and truly miss friends who used to e-mail me. Don’t think of the worst that they let me go. No. They are so much interested in writing the message on *that* social networking website where I was forced to put up some profile b’se I was kind of fed up with the invitees I was getting.

The issue is that I want my messages near me. That’s why I like e-mail.  They are mine and they are my history. I can easily download them with a click of a button, peruse through them and then save them to any format I like. I want to read them two, three, whatever years from now. Kind of cool isn’t it?

The problem is that with *that* social networking site is that I can’t do that with a click. Do I have to copy, paste, copy, paste and then do some more of that so that my messages are around me. I don’t think I will remain on that site forever or even with the way things are going, how sure am I that the site will be functional tomorrow?

So when all has been said, it’s nice catching up with friends and making new ones but please endure when I email you because that’s what I want you to do to me.

I heard him say

It was  Oppie who said this “Legs run and noses smell but for some people it’s different. Their noses run and their legs smell.

The movie P.G

I realized very recently that I can’t watch movies that are rated past 13 years comfortably . Either I have grown old and I can’t catch up with the world  or I have changed my view about the things I see.

XP on the X.O

At first they were blasting the whole project but now they have jumped on board. Whatever you want to think about it depends on how you think about it.  Having XP on those laptops is an extremely bad idea that’s all I can say. If the idea is to have a learning environment and tool, proprietary software is the last thing we should think of. It is like putting  barbed wire around a mango tree and telling kids to go for it. Dependence on Microsoft software and thinking is not a way of educating a child well.

Secondly, I really doubt if Microsoft’s motive is also to provide a learning tool to the underdeveloped countries. It has always been hackers and geeks in the open source community to attempt such stuff.

For now I keep imagining of a scenario of a primary school in my village where children have these laptops in class and can’t use them because of a virus infection(How are you going to begin lecturing children of 10 to something years on their first day to be careful on what they click or they infect their machines.) Don’t tell me because they are in a remote location virus infection is very minimal.