Danny's Space

562 General Luna Street Maly, San Mateo Rizal 1815

I've been browsing the colorful images in the media and the Internet has been providing me with ample resource for it. I choose this image of Tiananmen in China amidst a heavily polluted gray sky and underneath it is a billboard display of a clear, blue sky above towering mountains.  You can't get more irony from a single image. We could discuss this socially, philosophically or ecologically and not run out of things to say about it. What is wrong about this picture is what is perfect about this picture.

I know you have to go sometime but after the rain. When the wet and the dry reflect the heavens I breathe. When you take your punishment to set free and to light fires.

I kept back from making a post about it but I've had this problem since installing Ubuntu 13.10 last October. My mouse functionality is somewhat okay except for the scroll wheel. It doesn't work. Everything else does. I use the keyboard arrow keys but it's very annoying. I tried googling it but found the suggestions are unhelpful.

Hi Reese After 18 days Typhoon Haiyan's effects are fully understood now. The Disaster Agency of the Philippines NDRRMC estimates 24 Billion pesos of damaged properties and 3.4 Million people were affected. These are people who have lost loved ones, and lost homes. The current death toll so far is 7,000. The good news is that aid is reaching the hard hit areas and people are seeing government presence and care. Many countries promised to send help and they did. Some sent doctors and medical supplies for the long haul like the Israelis. Some sent ships and soldiers like the Americans and the Japanese. Many more countries are helping by giving funds for the long days ahead of rehabilitation. Many thanks to them and the United Nations. The Filipinos are grateful for the help.

The world responded with material goods and technical and medical help to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan. Thank you to all for your kindness.

This is how Typhoon Haiyan looked from space as she slams the Philippines with terrible ferocity. The surviviors and aid workers and the army are collecting bodies estimated dead are in the thousands. Damage can only be assessed as total. Tacloban airport terminal was wiped out but the tarmac is operable. Tacloban city lay in ruins. Agricultural areas weren't spared from destruction. all photos from Washington Post. Please see this post if you want to give HELP.

This is a reblog of charly's blog at Wordpress. Lieutenant Colonel Fermin Carangan is the Commanding Officer of TOG 8, the Air Force unit tasked to provide air support for the islands of Samar and Leyte. On the morning of Friday, November 8, he and his troops were in their office near the Tacloban Airport on red alert, having been informed of an incoming Super-Storm named Haiyan (local name: Yolanda). Here he narrates his ordeal as Haiyan unleashed her fury on the city of Tacloban on that fateful Friday morning. We were out of the office at 6 am Friday observing. Winds brought by Yolanda were already strong around that time. We (the Air Force troops in Tacloban) were prepared for the possibility of rescue missions days before the expected landfall of Yolanda. Just before 7 am, the rains started to pour, so we took shelter. Around the same time, we noticed that water wa...

Super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) devastated the cities of Tacloban, Cebu, Guian as well as the provinces of Leyte, Samar, Aklan, Mindoro and Antique. Most of the deaths occurred as the storm surge filled downtown streets with water and debris. The evacuation centers which was suppose to serve as secure places became watery tombs. There were images of bodies covered with mats along the side of the roads. Relatives are still trying to make contact with their loved ones in those affected places after 2 days. The Philippine Red Cross and Government responders are making their way into isolated barangays. People are cut off with no food and water. So it's a race for survival now. Here's how you can help. Please exercise due diligence when donating. Ask them how they're going to spend the money. You can also try the Philippine Red Cross and volunteer in repacking items for distribution. It's more fun to do these ...

I'm surprised it took me this long for a cat to make it to my blog. Internet meet Noname. 3rd generation pet cat. She likes to disappear for a day or two with no reason at all. She doesn't like questions but I suppose it's part of the adventure.

Typhoon Yolanda is a monster storm heading for a Leyte landfall around 3 - 6 am tomorrow. Meteorologists comment that its the strongest storm on Earth this year. It is also one of five Category 5 storms on Earth this year. Typhoon Bopha killed 1,000 plus people in Mindanao alone and this storm is as strong as Bopha.

Imee said these Dancing ladies are beautiful. I agree.

Mother calls them dapo. I took them and hang them here, where there's more light.

John john likes to play by the gate/ entrance. Hot day too.

I got out to see the wet leaves after the rain this afternoon.

I got this nebulous challenge about my webcam. It seems in Ubuntu 13.10, the webcam decides on its own when it wants to work. I use it on my skype calls with Mother. I also use it once or twice in Google hangouts with friends. I downloaded cheese just to test if it works fine. It works off and on in a span of one session. How do you figure this one out? The unity panels crashes often or it's missing icons now and then. The Thunderbird email application has rendering issues. Some texts goes white and turns back on after I move over my mouse. The lightning add-on stopped working the other day. I assumed it's Google Calendar refusing to give it permission or it's down. I happen to find the solution to this problem from the ubuntu forums. It seems the latest version of the add-on doesn't work in linux. The solution is to revert to an older version of the add-on. I had to disable the automatic update for the add-ons unfortunately. Equalizer plugin for Rhy...

Four days after a terrible Magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Bohol and Cebu in the Central Visayas, I'm looking forward with hope to a new version of Ubuntu linux. This version is a little thin in new features but the dash will come with more speed and stability and a lot more scopes. I'm liking the feature which enables me to sample/play my music right there when i'm searching it. I assume it's using rhythmbox without the gui, running in the background I suppose. I'm still in awe of nouveu, the open source nvidia driver. I thought I'd never see the day when open source can really say "fuck you" to proprietary graphics driver. But it can now!

I've decided to download Ubuntu 13.10 via torrent as soon as the release is available. That happened around 20:00 17-October. This is heavy internet traffic here. I checked my current system status with Updater and it has a few last minute updates for Ubuntu 13.04. So I updated 13.04. But the servers aren't ready yet for a upgrade to 13.10. Around 1:00 18-October I checked Updater again and it has some security updates for X-org. I let it update and Canonical's servers offered to upgrade my system to Ubuntu 13.10.

       I got an email from the Yahoo support regarding updates to my email contacts. They're cleaning inactive contacts. Nice to hear from them. I created this email back in 2003 and around 2006 decided to mothball it because they don't extend features to free accounts like spam filters. I've had problems with too spams and email security for the free accounts are virtually non-existent. That policy is changing I guess. I am looking at the new email user interface now and there are a lot of changes. The spam filter is working good. They're giving me 1 TB of storage for the emails. Flickr did this too a few months back. Well done Yahoo! I'm happy to add that exclamation point in there too.

Keeping a copy of Ubuntu 13.04 on my USB stick saved me some major headache. I was playing with a lot of PPA's for the latest GNOME packages and some third party themes. I kind of went over the line and can't find my way back. I decided to just re-install Ubuntu. I remember that I downloaded 13.04 last April 2013 and saved it in a USB stick I kept for situations like this one. My first thought was I'm going to spend my whole weekend now and more. Then I went and start GNOME terminal to survey my partitions. # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation /               ext4    errors=remoun$ # /home was on /dev/sda2 during installation /home           ext4    defaults     $ # /home/donato/Downloads was on /dev/sdb1 during installation /home/donato/Downloa...

Hi Reese After downloading 831 MB of Saucy Salamander, I booted to the familiar lightgdm log in screen. I was tempted to check the Gnome side of my installation. I gave it my password. I got this. This is Ubuntu "saucy salamander" Unity. It's a black colored background which isn't my default colored background. I attempted to use Appearance to activate some wallpapers but it doesn't work. The wallpapers are installed but they don't show up.

Hi Reese Now that the beta release is upon us, it's time to reconsider downloading and installing the developmental version of Ubuntu which is now "saucy salamander". This will become Ubuntu 13.10 on October 17th 2013. I decided to use the terminal. I googled the how to and I don't think the gui method works now. My terminal started properly. With my internet connection speed, It would take more than an hour to download 831 MB of image. So see you on the other side.

Hi Reese Just wrote you about this milestone in my use of email. I have 500,000 emails and counting since I started using Yahoo and Gmail around 2003 for Yahoo and 2006 for Gmail. Emails despite its age, still command respect because it is ubiquitous and cheap and easy to maintain and set up. Nobody has come up with a better idea. We could be using it still after 10 years. That's eternity in tech. Like saying forty days and forty nights or somethin'.

I first saw the film when a couple of college classmates got a video tape copy.The Shining was my first Stanley Kubrick film. It stars Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. The boy who has the ability to see things is played by Danny Lloyd. The family is spending the winter in a remote hotel up in the mountains as caretakers. Jack Torrence the father, accepted a job to baby sit a hotel while it's closed for the winter months. It was explained to him that a former employee committed suicide doing the same job. Danny Torrence the boy, could sense danger. He has an imaginary friend named Tony who speaks out when he is stressed. The title of the film is a euphemism of his power to understand danger and to put light on dark and mysterious images. My father used to call me Danny boy as soon as he gets home from work. Jack Torrence chased Danny with an axe in the movie while calling him Danny boy. I was watching this scene with a smile on my face that's why for the rest o...

I've been blogging for several years now and few people know I live in the Philippines. That link is actually a visitor's guide to the country. I think it will do more good to first time visitors who are trying to get a feel of my country to read about it here than the Wikipedia version. The Filipinos are the most welcoming group of people you will ever see. Most natives understand English and speak it as a second language. The Philippines is made up of 7,100 islands but the three major islands are Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. I live approximately 30 kilometers  north east of Manila the capital, in the island of Luzon. It mainly rains from June to October and major typhoons pass through the islands around August to September. The hottest and most dry months are March and April. Foreigner friends often tell me how could everybody be smiling when they always hear of the problems of poverty and inequality among the Filipinos. It's my opinion that we smile ...

What's the most compelling reason to switch to Linux? It's low maintenance. I don't have anti-virus software because I don't use it. I don't use it because I don't need to. I don't "defrag" my hard drive because the linux file system doesn't need to be defrag'd like Windows. It is stable. The Linux operating system is used in 95% of servers in the world for a reason. There will be bugs in any computing system. So the question should be how long does it take to fix a vulnerability. In the open source world of linux, anyone can look at the code and try to fix it. The more transparent the code is the more likely that bugs would be discovered and fixed. It's very customizable. The packages are modular. You can customize everything even the kernel. There are hundreds of distributions for every use and circumstances. You can try different desktop environments that will suit your need and personal preference. The more you go deeper into li...

Happy Linux Day to all. Head on out to a series of postings by Linux Torvalds in the months he was trying to come up with "something new" using minix. This is one of those things that boggles the mind looking back. I mean ask yourself this questions: What if he failed? What if he decided otherwise? What if he wasn't able to send those emails out? What if nobody responded? From: Linux Torvalds to the World, I Need Help What if nobody responded? Years after that call out to anybody for help in 1991, Linux is thriving. It is in 95% of servers, the fastest supercomputers use it (well almost all). It is in our smartphones and tablets. It is even in our desktops and laptops.

I've been using Linux since I got my own PC however I started using it full time (meaning at home, work and play) in 2006 only. It's a differentiation I would like to talk about.  Also Happy Linux Day, August 25th. I know about linux since the late 1990s, and play with it by installing it on my old machines. I think the word that I should use is tried to install. Back then, I was just happy if I see the log in screen at all. I tried Slackware, Mandriva and PClinuxOS. Around 2004-ish, I was using Opensuse on a laptop I borrowed from a friend and came across a brand new distribution called Ubuntu. I was happy with Opensuse and during that time it was the prettiest in the Linux world. Ubuntu came to be the most popular distro around 2007, and by that time I have installed it on all my machines. At home, my PC and laptops display the brown (some say orange) color of the background / desktop. Linux is already dominant in the server, but in desktops and laptops it lags be...

Some times I could not find the right words and some how you forgave me. I appreciate your feedback and I'm happy for the praises. There were times I felt guilty for not having the time to post more frequently. I hope that I'm making it up by blogging on and trying my best. This is one of the best things about the Internet. Its ability to empower individuals to reach his friends. Thank you very much for following me all this 6 years.  :)

High school students correcting twits from their favourite celebrities, edit posts to correct errors, these are the ways the Internet correct its mistakes. From spelling to grammatical errors, nobody is spared including middle aged retired school teachers. Be honest. Be courteous. Accept that not all will be gracious and acknowledge their mistakes. I fancy the white liquid erasers of the past. I heard that typewriters are coming back. But I reckon it's all nostalgia and not practical. You can't roll back time. I know you can delete the mistakes but I fear there's a hidden log within that records your edits. At some future date, the machine would be sitting in the judge's seat pouring over my error logs and eyeing me with disappointed eyes. I did not turn my auto correct on.

I woke up at night wanting to turn off the electric fan because it is colder by about 5 degrees at around 3 am now that it's July here in the Philippines. I'm a 46 year old man with a stage 1 hypertension just like my father before me. The elevated blood pressure comes with the males in my family. I am overweight by 30 lbs..but these are not the connections to my father which I want to write about. I sat at the side of the bed measuring the distance between the desk fan and me. It's barely 3 feet at 10 o clock. I can't will my feet. I can't raise them to make that first step towards the fan. I ended up anchoring myself to the wall with my two arms to catch what is apparently a fall. I had to freeze myself on this position and get my blood circulation to my lower extremities flowing. I proceeded to raise one leg then the other as if I'm trying to march like a Red Guard at Lenin Square. After a few repeats I graduated to a stationary jog. I felt the natur...

The main obvious point I wish to say is that all women are mothers. We all come from their womb. I know my mother would agree that it is she who takes care of the home while my father earns a living. This is how it is in my family and most Filipino families. This bill recognizes that family planning methods integrated into social programs can alleviate poverty. This bill gives women the tools and the various options to solve the daily problems of having limited resources while your child looks up to you for their needs. This bill mandates the government to universally provide contraception to women. This is the main point of disagreement with the church and bill's opponents. The church and its hierarchy has thrown every lie and false information into the debate when this bill was in the House of Representatives. Its proponents and supporters have answered this point by point and given out information to the public. The bill finally reached the President's desk for signi...

Rebranding in the tech world usually end in tragedy but I have high hopes for Flickr. Is it too late to write Flickr! With an exclamation point here. Free accounts like mine gets 1 Terabyte of storage and the site gets a makeover. I can still edit and retouch photos. But a TB gives me around 500,000 plus photos at 6 megapixel each. This is an invitation to the masses of photo sharers out there and a direct cannon shot to the bow of Facebook. I think Yahoo! is just getting started.

I've been using Audacious since 12.04 instead of Rhythmbox or Banshee . I discovered Audacious when I was dual booting Archlinux and Ubuntu in one of my machines. I like Audacious because it is solid, reliable and resource efficient but feature-full. It plays all codec types format types I can throw at it. Plugins are not an afterthought. I can enable them without any problems. Its tab interface is no problem to me. I can work with it. If the browser's tabs format is okay to people then why not a music player. To be honest, I'll miss the cover art but the plug-in / patch work way they try to implement this on Rhythmbox isn't working for me. Too buggy, sudden spikes in cpu, then locks up. The basic Rhythmbox works well though. One of these days, I'll test the brand new Banshee. It's in version 2.6 now and it's a bug fix release. I can't wait.

I first became aware of Evolution as soon as I use Linux. My first experience with it is mixed. The core functions were working fine but configuration was buggy. There were other mail applications that were easy to configure such as Thunderbird. Evolution also offers a full suite of enterprise features such as calendar, contacts management, LDAP, even Exchange. But it was buggy and slow it it works at all. I tried Evolution again (after being a Thunderbird user) and Evolution 3.x brought with it heavy development in the tradition of open source. Right now I'm using Evolution 3.6.4. It is easy to configure, fast to start, well integrated into the GNOME desktop. I am now enjoying my email tasks and my Gmail (email, contacts and calendar) works well and easy with Evolution 3.6.4.

Hi Reese I just came upon this ubuntuforum thread about setting up a proper firewall. It explains the howto but most importantly the whydo. I was under the impression that if you set up iptables with "default deny" you're ok. wrong. Outgoing rules should be "default deny" too. After making this rule of course I should make exceptions because I won't be able to connect to other machines. What are these exceptions? 1. dhcp 2.http and https 3.dns=53/tcp,udp 4.email (in my case email over SSL) 5.Bittorrent client List of Ports here. This set up adds to security in my desktop. If you have additional applications that cannot make connections. I suggest you look at /etc/services file, the List of Ports above and the ubuntuforum thread OP will likely answer your query.

The bloom part.

It's a good idea to create a second account in Ubuntu (or even if you're using any other Linux distribution). It's no secret that Linux is very customizable and the urge to play with it once you're set up is very strong. A second account configured minimally, is a good way to back up your settings, also it serves as a life boat if your command module gets stranded. You can create an account by running User Accounts. User Accounts under System Settings Or just open a terminal type: $adduser "username" Go with the defaults. Enter a password once prompted. Information regarding user will be saved in /etc/adduser.conf. Now you can modify or theme your main account all you want.

There are many so called reviews of Ubuntu 13.04 coming from many so called tech / linux publications here and here.   You will not mistake their bias and the tone of their writing. Do read it. Remember though it's not tech news. Nor are these unbiased reviews. If you haven't tried the latest Ubuntu, you can download 13.04 here. I have been using the development version of 13.04 aka Raring Ringtail, and following the brouhaha regarding the suggestion to make Ubuntu a rolling release. The release is very good. 13.04 has the feel of an LTS. The Unity desktop in 13.04 is very quick and stable. Unfortunately Canonical reduced the support time from 18 months to 9 months. This will be the last ubuntu to use Xorg. The next version will use Mir. These are exciting times for the Ubuntu community.

Ubuntu developers just made 13.04 available for download . It comes with 9 months of support and will be the last ubuntu to use Xorg. Next version will have Mir. The next cycle of ubuntu development will shift from the desktop to smartphones and tablets. Ubuntu 13.04 with Firefox 20 This is a very good release. 13.04 feels like an LTS. It recovered the old ubuntu speed and Unity delivers what it promised a few versions ago.

It's summer in the Philippines and the temperature reaches 35 degrees Celsius. Imagine my surprise finding this small rose blooming in the heat of the afternoon sun. That's tenacity for you.

Watching "The Exorcist" for the nth time and I just notice all the premonition scenes in the beginning of the film. Well first the clock stopped, the horse drawn carriage almost running over Father Merrin and the two soldiers charging him with guns pointed. It occurred to me that these same premonitions happened to me before. Come to think of it, the two dogs fighting and biting also happened to me. How many movies have you watched that contains premonition scenes that has happened to you? I don't know if I'm going to meet the devil but I'm sure I'm no Father Merrin.

Super freak, Yes! I don't want these people to judge her. They will laugh at her! What is your daughter doing? Kicking ass. OK. You folks get off free. As long as you don't enter her in a beauty pageant in the state of California ever again. Ever. I think we can live with that. Little Miss Sunshine

Google Reader is dead. I'm back to using Liferea. This desktop application was my go to tool back when I was a desktop hardcore. I can't trust Google and I can't trust the Cloud. Maybe this is why I'm keeping my PC closer than my tablet or phone.

This fix was from Dmitry Pankratov at Launchpad . I have the same problem as many in the thread. Dmitry posted a script as a workaround. The problem with Skype involves the nvidia driver, so if you're using the open source graphics driver you shouldn't be experiencing this. The script loads mesa driver to be used by Skype. If you want to solve this problem for all users, then change permission for /usr/bin/skype. $ chmod 0755 /usr/bin/skype It works.

I installed 12.04 Ubuntu Unity last year. It is awesome as always. Then October came and I upgraded to 12.10 using the upgrade tool. There were additional lenses or scopes that came with this version. Unity dash is slower and there are frequent freezes when I use the dash search because it takes time to populate the images / icons. Unity is annoying in 12.10. It is suppose to make life easier but it fails to deliver. A few days before the beta release of 13.04 I decided to upgrade again. Raring Ringtail is alpha but I heard that it is ready. Was I glad I took the plunge. Raring is ready. I lost skype but no big deal. No freezes when I use the dash search and there are additional lenses / scopes. A few icons like the home folder and the updater are replaced with new ones. There's a new version of the linux kernel used here, 3.8.0.13, as of Saturday. I am using nvidia driver 304.0. There are a few instances when the desktop crashes coming out of sleep. I move the muse and I get a...

Argo presents a story that happened behind a very public hostage taking of american embassy personnel during the Iranian revolution. It might have been compared to Zero Dark Thirty, which is also a film about actual events. The latter is a film about the hunt and killing of Osama bin Laden. The former is about a group of american embassy staffers who made it out just in time to see their colleagues blindfolded and taken hostage by Iranian revolutionaries. Argo gives us compassionate heroes, spies willing to sacrifice their careers and scared people coming through in the end.  Argo is not precise military operations. Argo is a cover for extracting six Americans in the midst of revolutionary Iran. Argo is fake film making, Argo is a film about a fake movie. There lies the irony. Acting in and directing Argo is Ben Afleck. He plays Tony Mendez, as CIA officer, along with Alan Arkin and John Goodman. His character created a fake Canadian production film crew to smuggle six Ame...

It looks like Intel has provided a graphics driver installer for Ubuntu and Fedora. Has any one tested this? I can't make it work though. I have Ubuntu 32 bit.

Changes are happening very quickly in Ubuntu land. The changes are needed to attain goals of putting out an operating system for a lot platforms - from desktops, smartphones, netbooks to tablets. The current proposal is: - a shift to rolling release for interim releases (this won't affect ubuntu 13.04 this April 2013) - continue to release interim releases but support them until the next interim release comes along - do interim releases once every month This thing has happened before remember. Chrome browser started the quick pace of development with the browser. Mozilla has to follow the same if they want Firefox to stay relevant. For now Firefox is holding its own. Maybe even outdoing the Chrome team. Have you used Firefox 19.0? Wow. A rolling release is very much like walking, if you think about it. One throws their body forward in the air (unstable) and moves one foot forward to catch it (stable) before their face...

NASA knows the path and arrival of asteroid 2012 DA14 . This rock is 45 to 50 meters in diameter and will pass very close to earth. It was not visible but radio images were provided. It passed within the orbit of most earth satellites that 15th of February 2013. Another asteroid was to make history and a flashy appearance. This rock entered the earth's atmosphere, shone like the sun, broke in pieces, shattered glass windows and panicked a city. It's about 17 meters in diameter and released energy estimated at 470 kilotons of TNT according to Western Ontario Professor of Physics Peter Brown's analysis. Say about 24 times Hiroshima. Don't take the professor's word for it, you can go to YouTube and search for video testimony of the bright rock captured by russian dash cams also the same day. It's only a coincidence says NASA. 

I've been trying to get some ideas why Danny's Space  isn't rendering (black screen) in Chrome/ Chromium browser. It's okay in Firefox and Internet Explorer. I "fixed" it and by that I mean reverted back to my old template from the dynamic view suggested by Blogger . Old template restored. Dynamic view with its javascripts reliant page just isn't rendering properly in Chrome/ Chromium. I'm glad to have you back. Sorry for the inconvenience.

When Ubuntu for Phones was announced,it is the Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 devices which will become the reference device for developers and app makers. Now that the Preview version of the Ubuntu Touch is out, there are now 25 other devices to add there.  I'm in the market for a smartphone and I really want Ubuntu Touch but I can't decide which device to get. In a perfect world, the manufacturers themselves make sure that their device works great with the OS. But this is Linux. But this is Ubuntu. But this is Open Source. You say I can't have it, I say I will port it. Some reports are coming in (and it's not even a week yet) that Ubuntu Touch developers and voluteers are working to make the OS available to as many android smartphone and tablet as possible. The tech blogs are mostly giving the Ubuntu Touch high marks for elegance and smooth operation.  Unless the OS becomes available in many manufacturers' phones and tablets as pre-installed, porting it will ...

I've had this issue before and I thought I had it licked. Chromium doesn't render my blog at Danny's Space  properly. Everything is black and dark. I know I'm connecting because when the mouse hovers over the dark page links are showing. So use Firefox I heard you say. Ya well, I'm a heavy Google Drive user and upload a lot of stuff. It works a lot better with Chromium. I can upload a folder with a mouse click and forget about it. Firefox fails to run the necessary javascripts and applet. I can still upload individual files though.

Libraries aren't just storage spaces for books. I was nine years old and in 4th Grade when my refuge at school was the library. It's two classrooms with bookshelves on all sides. It was right next to the principal's office. I guess they put them on this side of the school building because most kids don't want to go purposely there. It was quiet and secure and I love books.  My first stop in the library are the travel books. Well I like to read adventure stories and history as well as geography. I like that that they put these books at eye level and they put the math books on the high shelves. I would read for hours and then try to find the meaning of the words later in the dictionary and the encyclopedia. This was before the internet.  This library has only one door. It's the entrance and exit in one. I go around  the room, finding the books I want to read. The reference books are in the middle of the room. I will sit on the floor for hours after classes. Feed t...

I'm still living the Google Drive world with its docs and ALL file format compatibility. I'm checking my google mail on my PC and my phone.And getting notifications wherever I am. I can check what my friends are doing and chat with them. By that I mean give my 5 word comments on twitter or in a growing thread in their blogs. So do I need one operating system to rule my devices. Certainly not. I can do a lot with a smartphone and its apps.  Ubuntu's proposition is that a single user experience is the goal. To achieve the goal, the way is one operating system to rule the desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. After Microsoft's domination of personal computing, the suggestion of one OS sitting on all platform is going to be met with doubts even with an open source OS. As a desktop user and smartphone user, I can believe in the vision of enhancing the user experience. I mean why dock a phone or use a usb when you can just jump from phone to desktop and vice versa.  

    Sent to you by danny via Google Reader:     Firefox introduces PDF viewer to browse the Web without interruption via The Mozilla Blog by Mozilla on 2/19/13 Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux introduces a built-in browser PDF viewer that allows you to read PDFs directly within the browser, making reading PDFs easier because you don't have to download the content or read it in a plugin like Reader. For example, you can use the PDF viewer to check out a menu from your favorite restaurant, view and print concert tickets or read reports without having to interrupt your browsing experience with extra clicks or downloads. Firefox for Android now available to 15 million more phones, in more languages and with more personalization Firefox for Android  is now available to more Android devices with ARMv6 processors, bringing a better Web experience to almost 15 million more phones. This includes popular phones like LG Optimus One, T-Mobile myTouch 3G sl...

Prometheus – Ridley Scott 2012 Halloway, played by Noomi Rapace, is a scientist who discovered that ancient civilizations knew we came from another planet and went in pursuit of a star map to investigate. This is a nice premise. That we did not evolve from the apes but was seeded here by another race. Darwin says that we evolve (evolution) from other animals because we can. Evolution hasn't given us direct evidence that we did in fact evolve from the apes. Just because we can evolve doesn't mean we did. On the other hand, there are ample evidence that meteors and space dust that bombard planets provide a healthy medium for water and other stuff of life, perhaps even DNA, which can start life somewhere else in the universe. Halloway along with a team of scientists, engineers and others traveled to this destination in the map to find out the truth. The film is ambivalent a...

Hello to Google+. I can automatically put up my blogs and post them to Google+. It just make sense to me.

I had to delete my Arch Linux partition. I have a problem with sytemd and it freezes at starting a graphical interface. I have no time or inclination to troubleshoot it. To be fair about it, the nvidia driver update might have something to do with the problem. I am using Ubuntu 12.10 Unity now. It is slow. Okay, you want me to use the lens, right. Before it can populate the results with images, it takes 5 seconds of computing time. That's eternity to most users. Gnome 3.6 desktop search sources does not include my documents, pictures, music and videos. Not so useful does it? I use the GNOME desktop search application for that and it's faster than unity's. I like Firefox in Ubuntu 12.10. I am using version 18.0.2 now. It's fast. No significant crash. Mozilla finally managed to solve the memory leaks. I've been using Firefox for 15 hours without closing it. Very good. No more Evolution. hurray! I am glad that Thunderbird is the default mail application. Thunder...

I was surprised by people before. They suddenly smile at me or I might receive a pleasant comment from otherwise distant people. I threw a question to some random duo manning the checker box at the town border. They usually charge large trucks for use of the road. It might be a slow day though. I asked them if I could throw some sacks of discarded sand, soil, rocks and refuse at an adjacent and vacant lot next to them. Next thing I know they were volunteering to do it themselves. I had to smile hard. It's a very beautiful day.

Hi Reese I intentionally used the blogger site new post tool to test it. I also visited grc.com/shields-up to check my internet vulnerability. I am back using Ubuntu 12.10 Unity. I am using OpenDNS and dnscrypt-proxy to encrypt dns traffic. I decided to let Domer go all the way. I told him I will not accept his proposal for continued use of our space. I will not accept his deposit. I will be demanding his additional water and electricity payment for the period January 18 - February 8. I can send messages in the twitter site now using Firefox. Finally resolved. I don't have to switch to Chrome/Chromium to send twits.

I've settled down on using Audacious as my music organizer and player. I like it because it plays my music using playlists. The default playlist is generated from the Music directory. So every time you add tracks you just refresh and the list is updated. Then I just make playlist as I go along. There's a very nice search function too. What sold me is the excellent equalizer and gstreamer/codecs. I have yet to run an unknown music file, something it cannot play.

There is a proposal that's being debated within Canonical's developers of the Ubuntu Linux distro which if implemented will turn the regular 6 month development cycles into a rolling distro model. It will keep the Long Term Support versions which is released every two years and supported for five years. If this plan is implemented, how will it affect me? I dual boot Arch linux and Ubuntu. I upgrade Ubuntu whenever a new version is released so that means I upgrade every six months. Arch linux is a rolling distro and one of the reasons I dual boot Ubuntu is because I deemed it more "stable" than Arch. This setup lets me play with a cutting edge rolling distro but also let me keep Ubuntu as a safety net. Now that the two are going the rolling distro model...well you can see where I am going. I probably should look for the traditional distro where they release when it's ready. I could probably keep Ubuntu (the rolling distro) and play with it if I find t...

I reinstalled my operating system many times before. I probably didn't need to if i just knew what to do and if I didn't make mistakes trying to undo previous mistakes. I reinstall because I'm in to deep into trying out solutions to my original problem and digging myself out will just take a lot more time than if I reinstall. In any case, reinstalling seemed like a cop out for something as elegant as the Linux operating system. I believe this enough that I dual boot two linux distros, Ubuntu and Arch. I use Ubuntu because it follows a 6 month development cycle and then use the final version until the next cycle produces the next version. This means it is stable and secure for the set time. I dual boot it with Arch because I want to learn more of linux by using a different distro. Arch is a rolling distro which means it updates packages more frequently. It tends to be less stable and prone to bugs. In fact it feels like users are testing packages ...