Teh Post

My short Thunderbird 3 review

Friday, December 11, 2009

Download : This took forever, I guess all the servers were swamped because my 1megabit cable connection wasn't pulling more than 5k/second.

Install : Pretty standard stuff.

Look and feel : The new interface is pretty, I liked it.

Usage : It prompted me for my SMTP password, which is not cool because I don't remember it and don't feel like bugging my boss.

Conclusion : Re-installed Thunderbird 2.0.0.23

harhar

Reddit is DOWN

Saturday, May 16, 2009

That's right, reddit is DOWN.

Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later.

Reference #6.35e6f6cc.1242496097.1963ce07

I have the sneaking suspicion that this is due to some 'updates' set to roll out last night - but of course I can't be sure. These updates were suppose to address the insane inconsistency seen on the front page, the `next` button and more. I won't go too much into that but let's just say quality control isn't what is use to be. Reddit is no small deal, nor is Wired, Conde Nasty or Advanced Publications (parent co's). Although the team at reddit does a fine job I'd expect more from a tech site.

Update: Reddit is back UP, but this post will stay in place. It was down (and I do mean DOWN) for the first five minutes I tried it (7+ attempts, no dice kids).

Ubuntu : No sound using Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Hats off to the Ubuntu dev team for breaking another standard feature.

When I installed from my Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron CD my Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller worked perfectly - life was good.

As usual when installing Linux there were many updates available including :

linux-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-headers-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-image-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-restricted-modules-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21

I held off on installing these because they were a bit large (over 15mb) and my poor DSL connection simply can not handle it! So last night I decided to run the update before I went to bed in hopes that it would correct a problem I'm having with apps randomly crashing (Firefox, Opera, etc).

Well upon bootup today my audio did not work at all. When I tried to open the volume controls (via the Volume Applet in Gnome) it spit out some error about no devices found, and so on.

A quick visit to Synaptic to uninstall the above packages plus a quick reboot and once again I have sound!

Short version :

These upgrades broke my support for the Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller :

linux-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-headers-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-image-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21
linux-restricted-modules-generic (2.6.24.16.18) to 2.6.24.19.21

By uninstalling these packages and reverting to the 2.6.24.16.18 chain I was able to get my sound working again (reboot required).

Enjoy!

XMMS2

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Thank you so much for the release of XMMS2 which,

"is a redesign of the XMMS music player. It features a client-server model, allowing multiple (even simultaneous!) user interfaces, both textual and graphical." --Synaptic

XMMS1 was uber lame. I got an icon which loaded a wonderful graphical interface. It was easy to use and "just worked". This was far too simple and straight forward. I'm very pleased with your recent work. Previously XMMS was one of the few applications that I liked on Linux that "just worked". I'm very happy to report it no longer resides on that list.

Thus far I've installed over 15 packages related to XMMS2 yet I am not able to load any sort of graphical interface - this is perfect. This new system which includes no menu listing/icon, no graphical interface, no simple instructions, and requires MORE packages surely marks some sort of apex for the XMMS team.

I wait with baited breath for the next release of XMMS.

Copyscape banners not loading

Saturday, June 21, 2008

For the last few days or so I've noticed my CopyScape banner hasn't been loading! The URL for my banner was something like : http://banners.copyscape.com/images/cs-wh-3d-88x31.gif

I checked the CopyScape page and noticed their images were dead also! I'm thinking that the banners might not actually be down but there may be some sort of strange network or DNS issue occurring.

If the images are also offline for you take heart, you can download the PSD file which contains every CopyScape banner! Please note that the PSD link is at the bottom of the page.

Enjoy

Firefox 3 download day of troubles

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

At approximately 1:15pm during Firefox 3 "Download day 2008" world record setting thingy I attempted to browse to the official download site which I had previously visited without issue.

Out of the 10+ times I've tried to load the site it has failed 95% of the time. On one of my last visits I noticed that they were using Joomla CMS (?). I'm a bit shocked they didn't splash up a static HTML to handle the impending network tidal wave.

Presumably someone is getting paid big bucks to think about this sort of thing.

Hey Mozilla, here's a tip.

1. #/etc/init.d/apache2 stop
2. #nano /var/www/index.html
3. Insert appropriate static HTML code (make sure it validates!)
4. Save file
5. #/etc/init.d/apache2 start
6. Profit!

Upon my first few attempts to load the official site the connection failed after a long delay.

After the Firefox 3 download page finally loaded the world.swf animation failed to load.

I then noticed that to top it ALL off the download links were not correct! The download links still pointed to Firefox 2.0.0.14! Notice the strange mime data at the top of the page.

IE4Linux Download problem during installation

Saturday, June 07, 2008

So today during my install of IE6 / IE7 using IE4Linux I noticed it kept failing to download certain files about half way through and then would report that the file was corrupt.

I tried the IE4Linux installer a few times to see what was going on and also noticed that when the file was failing it would fail really quickly. What I mean by that is one moment it's downloading and everything is fine then the next moment it fails and says there is an error.

Here is the log of what happens :

IEs4Linux will:
- Install Internet Explorers: 6.0, 7.0
- Using IE locale: EN-US
- Install everything at: /home/remote/.ies4linux
[ OK ]

Downloading everything we need
Downloading from microsoft.com:
DCOM98.EXE
mfc42.cab
249973USA8.exe
ADVAUTH.CAB
CRLUPD.CAB
HHUPD.CAB
IEDOM.CAB
100% IE_EXTRA.CAB
53% IE_S1.CAB!! An error ocurred when downloading. Please run IEs4Linux again. Corrupted file: ie6/EN-US/IE_S1.CAB

The fix for this is really simple. When you first run the IE4Linux install click the "Advanced" button and add the code below to the Wget flags section.

-t 10 -T 10

So the full thing should read

-c -t 10 -T 10

This tells Wget to use a network time out of 10 seconds and to retry 10 times upon failure. As soon as I used these options the downloads worked with no problem.

Enjoy!

IMDB is down (if you use Sprint Mobile Broadband)

Friday, June 06, 2008

So I was trying to visit IMDB tonight and have been experiencing total failure :(

[23:21:19 Fri Jun 06]
$ ping imdb.com
PING imdb.com (72.21.211.32) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- imdb.com ping statistics ---
14 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 13079ms

[23:21:37 Fri Jun 06]
$ ping 72.21.211.32
PING 72.21.211.32 (72.21.211.32) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 72.21.211.32 ping statistics ---
21 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 20126ms

[23:22:23 Fri Jun 06]
$ tracepath 72.21.211.32
1: 68-241-81-83.area5.spcsdns.net (68.241.81.83) 1.043ms pmtu 1500
1: 68.28.185.69 (68.28.185.69) 255.658ms
1: 68.28.185.69 (68.28.185.69) 213.871ms
2: no reply
3: 68.28.187.55 (68.28.187.55) 235.587ms asymm 5
4: 68.28.191.5 (68.28.191.5) 224.894ms asymm 5
5: no reply
6: 68.28.187.18 (68.28.187.18) 237.367ms
7: sl-gw29-atl-5-0.sprintlink.net (160.81.97.161) 220.811ms
8: sl-crs2-atl-0-1-0-3.sprintlink.net (144.232.8.233) 227.487ms
9: 144.232.9.86 (144.232.9.86) 187.960ms
10: atl-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.21.45) 257.435ms asymm 11
11: dcx-core-02.inet.qwest.net (67.14.32.117) 219.757ms asymm 13
12: dcp-edge-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.251.74) 237.789ms asymm 13
13: 65.120.84.2 (65.120.84.2) 220.733ms asymm 14
14: 72.21.209.34 (72.21.209.34) 257.125ms asymm 15
15: no reply
16: no reply
17: no reply
18: no reply
19: no reply
20: no reply
21: no reply
22: no reply
23: no reply
24: no reply
25: no reply
26: no reply
27: no reply
28: no reply
29: no reply
30: no reply
31: no reply
Too many hops: pmtu 1500
Resume: pmtu 1500

Seems the internet gods are very angry!