Ubuntu? Laptop? Intel Graphics? Speed Boost!

If you’re using the latest version of Ubuntu, Jaunty Jackalope, or version 9.04 and you use a laptop with an Intel graphics chip like I do in my Dell D630 you may have gotten used to to the God awful video performance since you upgraded from the previous release.

I had. I had forgotten that windows aren’t supposed to tear when you drag them, and that yes, the underpowered chipset in my laptop can sort of handle the special effects in Compiz. What changed? The new drivers in 9.04 did. Intel are apparently reshaping how their drivers work but while they do it performance has taken a back seat and is cheerfully swilling on beer while the computer does the heavy lifting up front. (errr)

Anyway, simple way to fix it? Revert to the driver in the previous version of Ubuntu! It’s horribly easy to do. Just follow this guide, update your apt sources, install the old driver and restart X. I did and now I have fancy windows bouncing here, there and everywhere! In fact, my wife used her online O2 account to send a few texts and the confirmation popup window hopped around the screen all on it’s own! Oh how we laughed!

Oh, and for anyone who uses a browser, there’s a really simple way to get a CPU upgrade for free. Download Chrome or Chromium (or for Ubuntu .debs) and give it a whirl. After using Firefox for many years it’s like a breath of fresh air, fast moving air that is as it zips along! OK, it’s not completely bug free. The latest builds have a problem with the “default browser” setting (grab a build from around Sep 4 but the fix will be available soon) but it’s the main browser on my Linux desktop and I love the thing!

Missing months of expenses

So, here I am working on my end of year accounts with the help of my wife and I read Gavin’s unbelievable report that the Dail, our national parliament, has lost 29 months worth (over 7 years) of expenses data for Irish politicians! You’d think that after almost 100 years in existence they might have got something as simple as storing expense sheets down to a fine art?

Why is this not so bad? Well the news aspect firstly. The Houses of the Oireachtas have so far been unable to locate expenses data for a combined period of 29 months. Eh? Not alone that, they want to charge me to find this information. Information that really should be in the public domain anyway. But we have to deal with the system we have…

Still feel guilty about losing that petrol receipt now?

The kicker is, it’ll cost €2,440 to pay civil servants to search for this information that should already be in the public domain. Gavin is looking for donations to pay for the FOI request but I think a national paper or media organisation should stump up the cash and help bring politicians down a peg or two when the sh*t hits the fan.

WordPress Upgrade Notifications by Email

This weekend will go down in history. It’s the first time I’ve been seriously sick in well over 5 years. A bug infected my son on Wednesday, but he got over it quickly enough. Then the same bug hit my wife and I on Sunday morning and we’re just getting over it now.

Odd that a worm attacks software I work on and I get very sick at the same time. Unfortunately I couldn’t run an exploit scanner and remove the bug but my body’s defenses took care of the bugs eventually.

All this leads me to a handy little plugin called Upgrade Notification by Email written by Konrad Karpieszuk. Install it on your blogs and it will check once a day if a new version of WordPress is out. When that happens it will email the admin with a message saying the blog must be upgraded.

It’s odd that the plugin itself contacts WordPress.org instead of relying on the built-in version checker but it’s only one request a day.

What I’d like to see next is a direct link to the upgrade page on the blog.

Far more challenging would be a plugin to auto upgrade a blog. In case a theme or plugin breaks things the plugin should probably deactivate all plugins and change the theme back to the default theme. Once the upgrade is complete, all plugins should be reactivated and the theme too. The admin has to be emailed before and after the upgrade.

It’s easy to say what it should do, but doing it is another thing altogether. The reactivation process has to be sandboxed in case of failure so the plugin doesn’t die. The plugins page already does this so at least there’s example code to work from. Anyone up for coding it?

Huge Xbox 360 price hike on the way

Well, this is shocking. I’m glad I bought my Xbox 360 a while back before this price hike went into effect.

For those who don’t know, visit the Xbox 360 Elite page for Ireland. See that price? Looks like we get gouged yet again with sky high prices in rip off Ireland. *sigh*

I bet you thought the minor price hike in the UK was bad. At least Microsoft could blame a weak currency but we’re in the Eurozone for crying out loud!

xbox price hike

(via)

PS. I can recommend without reservation the new Batman game. I’m a few hours into it now and it’s enthralling. It has to be the best superhero game ever. The scene in the morgue with the Scarecrow had me freaked out and just a little scared.
D’you remember the Batman stories where he fought Scarecrow? It’s one thing to read it and watch Batman’s reactions to the fears planted by the poisoned gases, but quite another to be right-in-there-feeling-the-fear. Can’t wait to play it again!

Batman: Arkham Asylum reviews roll in

Oh yes, I remember well the original Batman The Movie game. Bloody good it was, even if I didn’t get that far in it. Amazing music to top it all off. I can still hear the first level beat in my head all these years later.
I only played it on the C64 but the Zzap 64! screenshots of the Amiga version had me wishing I owned the more powerful 16 bit machine.

Batman The Movie, C64
Batman The Movie, C64

Batman The Movie, Amiga
Batman The Movie, Amiga

Actually, I remember seeing the flip screen Batman The Caped Crusader on someone’s Amstrad CPC 464 too but I never got into that sort of thing myself.

This year’s “Batman: Arkham Asylum” is another story altogether. I played the demo on Xbox Live last weekend and was blown away first by the amazing intro and the visuals, but then by how easy it was to swing from Gargoyle to Gargoyle, doing the Batman thing! The demo itself isn’t that long but it’s a great taster for what’s to come!

batman attack

The guys at Joystiq loved the game too, giving the game a very favourable review, even going so far as to say,

Easily the best video game 2009 has had to offer thus far.

The game’s Metacritic score has hit a very impressive 91 putting it in the 20 of Xbox 360 games.

Yes, of course the game is on my wishlist. Now if only there were 26 hours in a day…

PS. Just in case you’re not convinced, check out this metareview of lots of other glowing reviews. I want!

Jelly pirates walk the plank

I can’t remember how I found this twitter account but Jelly SMS runs a jellysmspirates account listing people who are using a hacked copy of their software.

A real time feed of people who are using a hacked copy of Jelly SMS for iPhone or iPod Touch

If you use a hacked copy of their software you better watch out. Your info might be listed on that Twitter account!

The important question for developers is, “Does it work?” Apparently it does. The developer has even seen increased sales and says, “For me, piracy seems to be a good thing!”

I wonder if any other online services do the same?

jellysms

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Upgraded my Dell D630 to 4GB RAM

That was quick:

  • Order placed with Crucial yesterday afternoon around 1.30pm for 2 sticks of 2GB RAM.
  • UPS guy called this morning at 11.30am with RAM.
  • Dell D630 laptop upgraded to 4GB RAM with the help of this tutorial. Only took about 20 minutes, although unscrewing and removing the keyboard was a bit nerve wrecking.
  • Rebooted and found that Linux only found 3.5GB of the RAM but fixing that is simple:

    # apt-get install linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server

  • Reboot and I see 4GB RAM. Should make running Firefox and Bibble Pro 5 a lot less painful. Both memory hogs.

4GB of DDR2 RAM only cost me about 50 Euro. I’m sure I have a receipt for 8MB of SDRAM I bought years ago. Cost me 100 quid then. So, 4GB of RAM back then would have cost a small fortune.

laptopmemoryupgrade

2gbmemoryupgrade

Edit: the server kernel has terrible video performance (unsurprisingly), I’ve gone back to the desktop kernel and will recompile it when that 500MB of RAM becomes a real necessity (or I move to a 64 bit version of Ubuntu).

How to avoid Amazon Wishlist headaches

If, like me you have an Amazon wishlist you may be missing out on wishes if you’re not careful selecting them.

The wishlist is a great idea. Browse around Amazon picking items you like and add them to a public list that your friends and family can use to buy you gifts. The only problem is that Amazon won’t always deliver the goods, but you won’t know until someone tries to buy something for you.

The first I knew about this problem was when someone sent me a tweet saying they got an error buying a game on my wishlist. Alarmed, I tried to purchase the same item.

amazon-gift-registery-problem

amazon-gift-registery-problem2

The first time I saw the message “We’re sorry. This item can’t be delivered to a Wish List or gift registry address” I hadn’t noticed the previous “Marketplace items cannot be sent to Gift Registry addresses”. At the time I was a newbie to all this and didn’t realise the difference between the Marketplace and Amazon itself. Searching for the error message took me to blog and forum posts discussing the problem. None were on the Amazon website. Surely it wouldn’t take that much effort to hide the “Add to wishlist” button on Marketplace product pages?
I eventually found time to correct things, and replaced as many items as I could with those available from Amazon itself, and not a 3rd part reseller.

Does this apply only to Irish addresses on the UK Amazon website or is it a general problem?

Oh, and here’s another quick Amazon tip. Buy gift cards on the Amazon site local to the receiver. My wife bought a voucher for her sister in New Zealand, but we used the UK Amazon website. When the voucher was delivered and used, it didn’t work. That’s a waste of money and embarrassing too. I should have cancelled the payment through my credit card but never thought to do so at the time.

Important Message
There’s something wrong with the gift certificate claim code you entered. Please check for transposed digits, omitted digits, and similar errors.

You’d think they’d have these basic problems sorted out wouldn’t you?

Trials HD is Kickstart for the next generation

Fans of gaming in the 80’s will surely recognise the name Kickstart 2. It was a motorbike racing game, running over all sorts of obstacles. It was fiendishly difficult to control but very enjoyable. The tiny graphics animated well and even supported two players racing split screen. If you enjoyed that game you’ll love Trials HD.

I played the demo of Trials HD on the Xbox 360 last night and couldn’t leave it alone until I finished the (unfortunately) short demo. Playing it involved plenty of crashes though, and it can be frustrating, but it’s fun, it’s pretty and it’s well worth trying out!

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