Playing with iGoogle

Tonight I have been playing around with iGoogle, and I'm unusually impressed. I don't normally go for this sort of thing AT ALL! Yet this is interesting, and it works surprisingly well.

Daz tried to show me iGoogle ages ago. I didn't even listen, I just thought it was like all the others. I'm sorry baby... My cynical nature often gets the better of me.

This is my home page. I am still playing around. Yet there are many many things to look at, and play with.

I have never liked the idea of a web portal, yet I think this has been done quite well. Especially when you add the functionality of other google applications, e.g. gmail, iCalender, iSpreadsheet.

I certainly think it is worth a look. I can see uses for it other than just a homepage. Yet I want to look more into this.

I put the games: "Frogger" and "PacMan", in a tab :) So I wasted a bit... of time playing them tonight :)

What do you think?

Yesterday I was looking at: freshgasflow.com. There are some very interesting things to examine. This page here particularly intrigued me:
Which one is Booba ?

Have a look at it and see what you think. I have my own theories, yet I would LOVE to hear what other people think.

Why do you think nearly 100% of people chose the same one?

Microphones & Skype on Ubuntu

Today I installed Skype in Ubuntu 7.04. There can be a number of problems running Skype in Ubuntu. Yet my biggest concern was getting my microphone working.

Microphone Troubleshooting
After doing an Internet search I found the following things to try:

A) The microphone capture is turn off by default to turn it on:

1. Double click the volume icon on the panel.
2. Now click Edit, Preferences.
3. You then need to make sure Microphone, Mic boost, and Capture are ticked.
4. Now there should be a Recording/Capture tab in volume control panel.
5. Go through each volume setting and make sure nothing is turned down or muted.
6. In the Switches/Options tab make sure you select the Microphone as the input source.

B) Edit /etc/esound/esd.conf to look like this:
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 1
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=

C) Restart alsa-utils:
# sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

D) If all of the above fail you can try installing the new version of the alsa drivers. This is the only thing that worked for me:
# wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2
# tar -xjf alsa-driver-1.0.14.tar.bz2
# cd alsa-driver-1.0.14
# ./configure
# sudo make
# sudo make install

If all of these things fail you can visit: Ubuntu Forums.

For more info please see: Zero-Sum: Ubuntu Microphone Problems and solutions, and DebuggingSoundProblems

Installing Skype

I installed Skype from the Skype Repository

1. Add the Skype repository*: deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
2. Reload or update the package information
3. Install Skype: # sudo apt-get install skype

Once Skype was installed I went into the options and played around with the sound device settings until they worked. Now I have Skype running in Ubuntu.

If you have problems running Skype Please see the Ubuntu community Skype page. If you need help adding a repository then please see: Repositories/Ubuntu.

**Edit 29/10/07
Update: I've written a new post called: Microphones and Skype on Ubuntu 7.10.

Looking at Ubuntu 7.04

I have decided to take a look at Ubuntu 7.04: Feisty Fawn. My partner Daz has been using it for a couple of weeks, and he said that he is reasonable happy with it. He said that it's not good nor bad, it just seems to work.

I just finished installing it on my computer. The installer was dodgy. After the install finished I rebooted, the system did a file system check, which failed, it booted again. Did another file system check then continued booting properly. I thought that I must have done a dodgy install, so I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled, but with the exact same results.
Yet after the final fsck I haven't had any further issues.

First impressions are; the system seems slow. Even sitting here typing now I am typing way faster than the words are appearing on the screen. The system seems to wait and be particularly slow when Firefox is open. Overall it feels very heavy.

Yet nothing has gone wrong yet. All of my hardware was detected and appears to be working. Everything else looks really good.
I'm excited to see what the view will be like from here.

Women in Computing: addition

I was just reading my rant from the other day and I feel I need to make an addition.

I have never been treated unfairly by people online or in the IT industry. Only in some computer stores, and by others in the community, especially in businesses. I don't really know why.
Yet I don't want to whine about it anymore.

I just wanted that to be clear! Thanks...

I need a break from Windows

I need a break from windows. It is driving me up the wall. It is not that it is bad, or misbehaving. In fact it has been quite good stability wise. I was quite enjoying working with it at first . I'm just over windows.
I was so glad the day I first left it. I felt that it was such a milestone in my understanding.

I remember when I first started learning DOS commands. I was so excited, it was such an amazing experience. After about 3-4 days I said to my partner this is so cool, there should be an entire operating system that you can control like this. He laughed...

A couple of days later I had my first experiences of a command line only system: FreeBSD. I loved it, I've never turned back. My understanding and knowledge has grown so much since then. It helps when you have an open operating system. In the BSD's and Linux's you can learn how everything works by read, writing and running the code. You can add to or change the code and most software is free.

At the moment I'm just frustrated because I don't like not knowing what my system it is doing. I can't just bring a command line up and check everything out. Opening webpages, downloading, and all other internet based tasks are slow. Things are constantly happening on the system, yet when I look into it windows reports that it is doing nothing :).

Plus my main whine is that everything is about money and locking you in. Any problem you can think of can be solved by buying this program or plug-in/add-on or whatever. I am so over it.

Women and computing

Take a deep breath this may well be painful. I need to have a little rant...
I'm sick of being treated like shit because I'm a woman in IT. Don't get me wrong I don't think that I should get special treatment or anything like that, I just wish I existed...

I wish that I didn't always have to prove myself over and above others, just to have my knowledge used against me. I wish that it didn't matter! I don't want it to be an us or them thing. I just want to work with computers, because I LOVE it. It shouldn't matter that I'm female.

I graduated top of my class last year. All the rest of my peers were male, and all now have jobs. I don't, I haven't even had an interview. Maybe there are other factors. Perhaps I'm missing the real reason.

Yesterday I walked into a computer shop. I needed a sound card for my fathers computer. I looked around for a minute, then went and stood by the counter. The all male staff were hurrying around. I stood there.

Then a male customer entered the store, within 20 seconds he was served. So I tried more frantically to gain the attention of an attendant. Nothing...
Then two males walked in together and were served straight away, I couldn't believe it. In the end I had to say load enough for the attendants to hear. "Hello, don't I exist here."

After about a minute an attendant walked up to me and said, "Do you want something do you?" I should have walked out, but there was nowhere else to go. He continued to be arrogant the entire time I was in the store. I walked out and burst into tears. All this is really getting to me at the moment.

I don't understand. I don't think being a women takes away from my ability to work with computers. I don't think that I have less knowledge than others in my situation. I don't think I act like I know it all. I certainly don't push the fact that I'm a woman in anyones face. So why do I get treated like this?

Is this a problem just here in Launceston Tasmania?
Are there other places in Australia were women feel like this?
Are there other places in the world were people feel like this?
Or is all of this just in my head? And women get treated the same as there male counterparts.

I'm sorry I'm just fed up with being nothing and nobody, and being treated like crap doesn't help. All I want is to work in the IT industry yet no one wants to give me a chance.