The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hey everyone,

Gentoo and Sabayon (instant Gentoo) are awesome. I downgraded my WINE and now WinMX works (well still having connection issues.) I am currently back on LMM (linuxmoviemania.com)(Using RoboMX) The more I use WINE, the more I want nvidia to hurry up with their new drivers (the ones that support xorg7.1).

I could just downgrade but where is the fun in that. Overlays in Gentoo are great. (Using local overlay with knetworkmanager, networkmanager, java 1.5 32bit (stupid ELP), and mplayerplug-in-bin). Because of this, I have discovered the magic and wonder of video.google.com and youtube.

I also have been getting CD Covers for my music in Amarok, Amarok is brilliant. Mono is great for C#. Anyways these are some videos / advertisements you have to see:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8333280591924223277 (Awesome IBM ad)

(Awesome Redhat Ads)

(Muppet Matrix, no more needs to be said)

(Bill Gates leaves a dinner party because Apple and Linux references)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2326396283485985651 (Wesnoth trailer)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6JtHDkM9JhM (pure Linux gamer ownage)

(My name is not related to the Apple company, it is related to a mishearing of Aquaman in BNL song One Week.)

This blog post’s question is: If life was just one big video recording, which moments would you want to watch, love to watch , hate to watch or be to embarrassed to watch ?

BTW Big Brother isn’t Real Reality TV. (it is a sham)

Best of luck and have fun

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Hey everyone,

I went to a LAN Party (uberfest) hosted by Curtis Bayne on weekend before I went back to university. The experience was an utter disappointment with numerous things turning out wrong.

These included

• taking and hour and a half to find the location of the place on foot
• Cheater not showing up (because he couldn’t find the place in car)
• My Gentoo not having a Direct Connect client prior to the LAN
• A feature in 2.6.17 messing with WINE (easy fix, once I had net @ home)
• The LAN didn’t have net
• Nexuiz or Wesnoth wasn’t played
• and the general conduct of the other lan guests was deplorable and disrespectful in my opinion

Otherwise things I have been tolerating. Things that have annoyed me include, Nvidia not releasing newer linux drivers that fully support X.org 7.1, Sun not releasing 64 bit Java with webstart. Limewire and other P2P clients not working. Considering I use these to share FOSS software which is perfectly legal and I am in social group on WinMX (Linux Movie Mania)(which normally works under WINE), this is really irritating.

I have also started an IT Professional skills subject at UNI, (which was hated by my fellow IT students last semester), I asked a genuine question of the guest speaker (previous student from last semester), and after talking to people, I am slightly worried he might have taken it the wrong way.

I don’t have his email yet, but would like to apologise for any embarrassment caused, I wasn’t trying to criticise him, just to find out whether the subject would improve people’s common communication and speaking problems. (He did handle my question, quite well though, I had the rebuttal lined up, but decided that the first lecture wasn’t the time or place.)

The early starts (up at 4 / 5 am) to get to uni before 8am (I commute) and late finishes are getting tiring but the subjects I am doing and their respective staff make it worth it. Whilst I am apologising for things, I apologise to Cheater, that I won’t be able play as much CS any longer. (I swear he is addicted.)

I am learning C#, and I enjoying the fact that Mono and Monodevelop working quite well on my Gentoo 64bit laptop. I hope to revive / recreate Fat Burger (A queneing simulation program, written in DOS) using my C# skills once I gain them, not to mention creating a program that answers one of the questions from my other maths subject (Computational Mathematics 1).(Wow, just imaging fractal generation in C#)

I also want to make a Maple macro that gives Maple the same functionality of the up key as the Linux Shell, but am not sure how to do this. I will probably host a LAN Party after this Semester and its exams are over. (Long way from now).

It is funny how the things you expect to enjoy become miserable disasters, and the expected miserable disasters become things you enjoy. (Note: this doesn’t mean I enjoy 002 or C#, I haven’t done enough of either to decide.)

That said, I is amazing how many times lately I have been humming Ironic (the song by Alanis Morissette). (Life has a funny way of helping you out. etc) I still haven’t meet Redhatter face to face and would like to.

If you have incorrectly expected something, I would love to hear about it, or you can just answer this blog’s question, If you really didn’t exist, would it affect your current existence ?

Best of luck and pineapple fish fingers

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234 =)

Hey everyone,

I am no longer full of sorrow. I apologise for not blogging sooner but whenever I tried I got interupted.

Going Places
I have been very busy traveling I went out to Tara (out past Dalby, which is out past Toowoomba), to visit an old friend of mine. After spending approximately 2 days with him and 1 to 2 more with his family (Whose hospitality and kindness were greatly appreciated) , I have decided to aptly label him the Tara Gangster without a Gang.

Whilst in Tara, I met several people, watched Hostel (stupid / terrible movie, gore scenes not gory, scare scenes not scary, sex scenes not sexy, and in the one opportunity it has to redeem itself, by creating a romance and a sequel in the partnering of the hero with 8 fingers and the Japanese chick with one eye, is ruined because of the need to save face (common cultural custom) in short the Japanese chick commits suicide by getting herself splattered / crushed by a train / locomotive).

I also spent time with the Gangster’s younger siblings (all male) allowing them to abstract (as in data abstraction etc, ) their need for bickering and violence out of reality and into my laptop. (Counterstrike and Wesnoth have found another use.)

After staying Tara, I was picked up from Toowoomba and came home. I then (the next day) went to Uni to meet Nick / Cheater in order to return to Gentoo. (Suse automounting being broken was annoying me). He said we would get it done in time, we didn’t. I personally wanted to use Sabayon. (awesome Gentoo livecd)

In my opinion if I had gone with Sabayon instead of straight Gentoo it would have been easier, but he didn’t think so. The reasons we didn’t get it finished included; a bad kernel symlink and Nick / Cheater spending too much time playing CS and not enough helping me.

So I made my way to Central Train Station to catch my train to the Gold Coast. I then spend the trip watching my Gentoo compile.

I got picked up, well meet by some great family friends in the Gold Coast.
Besides my gentoo compiling, the only memorable things from my time of the Gold Coast, were

• a conversation that I shared regarding the value of “Street smarts” (Real life learning). and methods and styles of thinking and interpretation, the incompetence and stupidification of society by media (Think Big Brother, yuck ), education systems and government
• and watching the “Pirates of the Caribbean”, awesome movie, but best of all, I love the characterisation of Captain Jack Sparrow.
• and finally enjoying a Dixie cup icecream

I have then returned home, and spent the last few days getting my wireless working.
w00t it works now.

Disclaimer

Names of things that are copyright, are copyright their respective owners, I mean no harm.

Gentoo Notes

Nvidia video drivers do work with Xorg 7.1.0 (despite what they say), you just have to use sub-pixel hinting in KDE.

The gentopia overlay with networkmanager and the custom ebuild of knetworkmanager inspired and tested by me, and made by cvilli64 and rubengonc of #Sabayon work using WEP with BCM4318. (bcm43xx native driver). I am not using Gentoo’s net scripts or base layout, because I like Knetworkmanager .

This means that I am right (To quote Curtis Bayne, “I win”) and Nick / Cheater owes me Mentos.
BTW, I passed Maths and 6ed (distinctioned) IT. Note to self, study harder in maths, much harder and don’t get freaked during exams.

On a closing note, if you had free trip to anywhere, anywhen where would you go ?

Best of luck and keep living

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234