(Yeah, I know I should be saying “GNU/Linux” blah blah blah. Please feel free to shove your head in /dev/null and rant.)

Why Linux? I think every Linux user gets asked that question sooner or later, and just about every Linux blog has a post titled something like “10 Reasons to Use Linux,” or “Five Reasons Why Linux is Better Then Windows.” It would be quite difficult for me to compress all my reasons for loving Linux into a tidy little list, because the reasons tend to be quite numerous and I doubt that once I was done anyone would want to read it (Also, I don’t like writing stupid cliched posts.). So instead, I’ll give one reason why I use Linux. Its not my strongest argument for Linux (or my weakest for that matter) and I don’t think its of the upmost importance, but its still a pretty good reason.

I use Linux because its easy to use.

And now every Windows user reading this is laughing and screaming insults at me. “Linux isn’t easy to use, you f*ing moron! I tried to use Ubuntu and I couldn’t even get it to boot. Linux is so weird and hard to use, you need to read twenty pages of documentation before you can even partition the hard drive. I spent three weeks messing with Linux and I couldn’t get my sound card to work.” Blah blah blah. The reasons and examples why Linux is so hard to use are almost endless.

But yes, I do think Linux is easy to use. Just about everyone that says Linux is hard to use will inevitably claim that Mac OSX or some version of Windows, which is what they’re probably used to, is infinitely easier to use. People that migrate to a new environment are often startled by the strangeness of the unfamiliar, and even thought the new world may potentially offer improvements over the old, most people would still rather huddle in the warm and comfortable skirts of that which reared them. Windows users find Windows easy to use because its familiar, its what they’ve used for as long as they can remember and they’ve grown intensely fond of the inappropriately named “start” menu ( ‘course Microsoft finally went ahead and gave it a new name in Vista). Lets face the facts people, Windows is only easier to use because its what you’re used to, if you had grown up with Arch Linux and Enlightenment you’d probably find Windows Vista (and Mac OSX for that matter too) to be a terribly confusing operating system.

I didn’t start using Linux because I thought it would be easy; I was actually expecting it to be quite difficult and it was. Initially, I had to teach myself to think and operate in a slightly different way, and to get used to typing strange commands into a terminal, but I quickly got the hang of it and within a week Fedora Core had become my default OS. I loved how easy it was to install and remove software, how i could perform powerful acts quickly with a terminal, and the vast number of software choices offered to me. But what really made Linux easy, was the fact that any problem in Linux could be fixed. I used to work as an intern in the IT department of a large company, and it always surprised me that the inevitable solution to a deadly Windows problem, was to simply reinstall the OS. Windows “experts,” no matter how good they were, simply didn’t know of any way to fix a reoccurring blue screen or similar problem. With closed source software, problems generally can only be resolved by the vendor, and if the vendor company is feeling cheap or lazy, the user is pretty much screwed. In Linux, a solution to a problem almost always already exists, and if doesn’t, it can quickly be found.

So go Linux. The easy OS.

So professional bloggers. Golly.

I don’t like many of them (Surprise! I don’t like a lot of people.). Oh, there are bloggers that I respect; those bloggers that put a good bit of thought and effort into their writing and actually manage to produce something that doesn’t sound like the drivel of a cranky child (The Linux Hater’s Blog immediately springs to mind, although I am a Linux lover).  But there are some people, mostly personal bloggers, that pound out pointless crap for about ten minutes a day and yet somehow manage to get paid quite nicely.

Some deep, inner part of my soul (OK, its mostly just my pride) is pained by the knowledge that someone on the internet is making a tidy sum of money by doing very little. I’ll take for example, the so-called most popular blogger in Singapore: Wendy Cheng. Her blog reads as though it were written by a ditzy, hormonal-driven, teenage girl, and yet she makes a goodly sum of money every day, through site sponsoring, just because a surprsingly large number of people enjoy reading her regular tirades and outburts of enthusaism. I’ve always thought Singaporeans are a bit weird (watch some Singaporean TV shows, spend some time in the city/country, I think you’ll agree) but they must be weirder then I thought to enjoy reading Cheng’s blog.

Granted, most pro bloggers aren’t all as bad as her. But because I’m a mean-hearted, biased bastard, I feel inclined to hate a lot of people. I suppose if I could count myself amongst one of those nicely paid, professional bloggers, I wouldn’t be as much of a hater.

Once upon a time, there was a young lad (read: me) who owned an ingenuous, two-wheeled, mechanical device for rapid human-powered transport. The device, called a bicycle, was in fact quite common in these times and could be purchased for a minimal fee. Now, this lad was dismayed to find one day that his bicycle had been seized by vicious thieves one day whilst he was at school improving his mind, and because the poor boy was loathe to spend his hard earned money it was many years before he obtained another bicycle.

When the lad, now a young man, finally got another bicycle, it was nothing like his shining bicycle of old, but was a rusted cast-off of some rich gentleman. Built of heavy steel, with thick sprockets the size of dinner plates (the big kinds that people use for eating extremely messy foods), and poorly made derailleurs, the bicycle was not the sort of device that a lad of these times would have lusted for. Indeed, most would have deemed the hulking metal mound a waste of time. But nevertheless the young man purchased it for a mere pittance, and labored over the bicycle, cleaning and mending it, making it whole and strong (or rather, as whole and strong as the decrepit bicycle could be). Yet all of his sweat was for naught, for the bicycle scarcely managed to travel two score miles whereupon the front tire was punctured by numerous thorns and the badly made grease-guard was ripped asunder. The young man however, though disappointed, did not lose faith, and yet again he strove to make the bicycle whole. On the bicycle’s next trip however, the tire was punctured yet again, the crank-shaft’s bearing-cage was crushed, bearings were spilled from the crank assembly, the rear derailleur was knocked askew, and the bicycle was reduced to a rattling, crippled steel beast. And although he made every effort to restore the machine to it’s former state, he knew that the bicycle was beyond hope, for it had suffered greatly and was beyond all mortal skills of repair.

Bearing these dark and ill thoughts, he set out in search of another bicycle and happened to chance upon a Trek 820 mountain bicycle. The Trek, much like the young man’s previous steel machine, was old and rusted, and happily, also quite inexpensive. He bought quickly bought the Trek, for the old man who sold it knew naught what a treasure it was. For though the Trek was quite dirty and rusted, it’s derailleurs were true, the frame was made not of readily available heavy steel but of light-weight chromium-molybdenum steel, and the wheels spun with a lightness and vitality that the young man had never felt before. He took the Trek home and cleaned and adjusted it, until the spokes shone and the brakes were tight. The next day he set out on a great quest.

But not a dozen miles from home, the strangest thing happened; the rear tire made a noise like “WHUNK PHIsssshhhhh” and in the space of five seconds the tire was reduced to the thickness of a sheet of parchment. The young man’s heart fell, for not only had his great machine failed him, he was also many miles from home without any form of transport save for his feet. He attempted to use the power of the demon Motorola, (an otherworldly creature capable of facilitating communication across long distances) to call forth assistance, but the demon had grown weary of roaming and lay as though dead. And so, the young man lifted the bicycle with both hands and attempted the journey towards the nearest sanctuary. His step did not falter and his grip upon the Trek’s frame did not grow weak, for though the Trek was weighty and refuge far away, his strength was as the strength of ten for his heart was pure.

There’s a lesson in this badly written not-quite-parable. It is: you get what you pay for. Paying ten dollars for a bicycle generally means you’re going to get a piece of shit (excuse my Klatchian). One must not however, be like my mother, who often confuses price with quality. That is to say, an increase in price does not always mean an increase in product/service qualtiy.

So basically, I have no point. If you’ve got a problem to that, and feel as though I’ve just wasted a good one minute of your life, please be sure to direct all comments to /dev/null.

I try not to make it a habbit of putting up quotes from books, (makes me feel a bit like Mary from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice) but I think this particular tidbit form Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant deserves to be quoted:

Vimes had noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: It fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination — but at the end of the day they’d settle quite happily for egg and chips, if it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.

Ever since I read The Colour of Magic I’ve been a great fan of Pratchett and his amazing witt. Indeed, I doubt that any other author would think to compare sex with cooking.

I once thought that Debian, with its rock solid stability and simple package management, was the answer to my distro-hopping madness, and that no other distro could fit my needs as well. But Arch Linux has managed to surprise me, satisfying my needs in ways Debian never could. (Did that sound weird and strangely sexual or what?)

The Arch Way, the five governing principles behind the development of Arch Linux, dictates that Arch should be: simple, have code-correctness over convenience, open, user-centric, and free. Elaborating on the principles would be too time intensive for this review, but the general gist of The Arch Way is the age-old engineering adage, KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). And Arch is simple. Most Linux distributions that claim to be simple, like Ubuntu or Mandriva, are merely simple to use for new Linux users, but Arch is a minimal, streamlined, and elegantly simple distro. Like Slackware, Arch’s base installation is quite Spartan, including only the kernel and the bare minimum packages needed to create a stable OS, requiring the user to do all the rest of the configuring and installation of non-essential packages.

Happily enough, unlike Slackware, Arch uses binary packages compiled for i686 so that users don’t have to compile their programs from source (not a very difficult process usually, but quite time consuming). Because Arch’s packages are optimized and compiled for newer i686 CPUs, users can expect a noticeable performance increase over distributions, like Debian, that use i386 packages. However, this also means that Arch will require a slightly newer CPU, a Pentium 3 or newer, whereas Debian can run on any 32-bit Intel-based processor. Arch also offers a 64-bit version, in addition to the 32-bit i686 version, if you want to be able to add more then 4 gigs of RAM to your system.

Arch’s package manager, called “pacman,” is reminiscent of Debian’s “apt-get” and just as easy to use. Pacman can handle the installation, removal, and upgrading of programs, and also resolves dependencies with a single simple command. If I want to install Banshee music player, all I have to do is open a terminal, become root, and type “pacman -S banshee.” Pacman also allows for Arch’s rolling release system, a system based upon on incremental upgrades. Unlike so many other Linux distributions that make a big fuss about new releases, Arch’s release version is essentially meaningless; a release ISO in Arch is simply a snapshot of the core repository with a fairly simple installation script. In order to upgrade my system to the newest kernel and software packages, I merely have to type “pacman -Syu” to fetch the newer packages from the repositories, so that even if I had used the three year old Wombat release, after an update my system would still be as up-to-date as if I had used the new Overlord release. Read all »

These pics are over a year old, but still funny. Back when I was running my own hand-written blog CMS, i had a little web app that would resize uploaded photos and create a photo gallery. When I switched to Typo, and then later Wordpress, my photo gallery kinda got lost. But I’m uploading these pics again.

FYI, the book I’m holding is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, and no I wasn’t actually reading it. We just went on the ride enough times for me know where the camera was and whip the book out. Read all »

I encountered today, what was quite possibly the most amusing advertisement for the weirdest product, that I have ever seen: the USB desktop humping dog. Yup, thats right, its a USB powered humping dog. Because they’re just aren’t enough useless USB powered objects today, we need another one that does nothing besides suck power and amuse viewers a wee tiny bit with strange sexual movements. The funny, funny banner advertisement, read:

USB gadgets aren’t always useful. [Well actually, all of mine are.] Sometimes they’re just beyond belief. [Yeah, no kidding.] But you’ve got to do something with your empty USB ports. [OK, I know modern computers come with a lot of USB ports, but who has ever said, "damn these USB ports, I just have to use 'em!"] This pint size version or our worringly popular [No kidding.] Humping Dog may not be the next best thing since sliced bread, but it’s a lot funnier. [Too true, too true.]

You can check out the vendor’s website, and see the cool animated GIFs of the humping dogs. Perhaps most amusing of all behind the high-speed animated humping, is the vendor’s statement that the dogs are “suitable for ages 16 yrs+.”

Read all »

In short, I believe the dv2910us is a highly recommendable laptop. To the common, casual laptop user, it looks good and gets the job done and can be purchased at a surprisingly good price (the dv2911us, which lacks a Lightscribe drive, was recently on sale at Office Max for only $550 US). To the Linux user, the dv2910us manages to be pretty Linux friendly and offers solid performance with its Intel hardware, although HP probably lacks some of the geeky coolness that Lenovo has. College students will no doubt appreciate (as I do) the fact that its fairly light at five and a half pounds, has a battery life of about two and a half hours, and still manages to be pretty sturdy. Gamers however probably won’t be too thrilled by the dv2910us and its integrated Intel graphics card and middle-of-the-road Intel Core 2 Duo.

The only problems I really have, is that the media keys’s sensitivity is non-adjustable, and that a matte screen option (instead of glossy) isn’t offered.

The dv2910us isn’t anything really stellar. It doesn’t have amazing processing power, super long battery, an innovative new esthetic look, a slim body, or a ridiculously low weight; which is why the dv2700 series hasn’t garnered the same kind of attention as the Apple Macbook Air or the Lenovo x300. But it remains a decent laptop, nonetheless, sufficient for all but the most strenuous of tasks.

What the HP dv2910us does have to offer that all those other popular laptops lack, is an affordable price. And for many people, like me, the price is always a major determining factor.

• Index
• Unboxing
• Build Quality and Design
• User Experience
• Installing Linux
• Summary and Conclusions (currently viewing)