Welcome to MekTrix 4.0

Expo was pretty awesome; the commercial side was even more commercial and less interesting than before — but then I was mostly going to check out cosplayers and the DDR tournament. Epic success on both fronts \o/ Mr Cuddlemews had his photo taken with many pretty people; and due to somebody dropping out of the tournament and nobody with any skill wanting to take their place, I volunteered to be slot-filling cannon fodder XD Of course I got utterly butchered, but I got to meet some wonderful people, and many funs were had \o/

Good idea: Go for a walk.

Bad idea: Go for a walk at 11pm, up the steepest hill in the area, directly away from civilisation, into the middle of a forest, where the main form of life is stinging nettles, and there is no light, and your torch is just about out of batteries, and even in daylight it’s impossible to tell where the path is, and what path there is alternates between slippery mud and rubble hills, while carrying a 30kg backpack just to see what it’s like.

(”Bad” can also be read as “fun”)

Specifically, this wins a place on my “things that are so awesome I cried” list :3

Because the world doesn’t have enough anecdotal evidence already:

On my gaming / media PC (custom built):

Graphics card, NVidia 8600 GT: ubuntu detects my monitor’s native resolution, runs ok using the standard drivers, and pops up a message asking if it should download the accelerated drivers automatically; windows runs at 640×480 until you install accelerated drivers from CD or google.

GPU accelerated h264 decoding: Linux yes, windows no.

Webcam, labtec thing: linux works out of the box; windows requires drivers from CD, and then the drivers crash whenever they’re used (and sometimes when they aren’t)

Extra USB ports: Linux PCMCIA worked in a fraction of a second (it was running faster than I could look at the “connected hardware” screen), windows PCI worked fine after 5 minutes of “you have new hardware!” “It is a PCI card!” “The PCI card has USB ports!” “There are 4 ports!” “Each port is USB!” “The USB version is 2.0!”…

TV capture card, Hauppage PCI thing: Ubuntu works out of the box, windows requires googling for drivers, and those drivers install crappy utility software.

Phone (Sony Ericsson k750i) as a modem: Ubuntu detects that the phone can be used as a modem, and pops up a message asking for phone service login details; windows detects the phone can be used as a modem, haven’t yet figured out how to use it.

Phone as USB storage: Linux works out of the box, windows requires googling for drivers.

Phone as bluetooth remote control for media player: Ubuntu works out of the box, windows works out of the box (No problems, no glitches, no googling for drivers; well done microsoft!)

And for the other PC (IBM thinkcentre):

Graphics (onboard intel 865): Ubuntu 9.04 broke 3D acceleration, all other distros and other versions of ubuntu work out of the box; windows works after googling for drivers

Sound (onboard intel something): Linux works out of the box, including features like disabling onboard speakers when external speakers are plugged in, and disabling external speakers when headphones are plugged in; windows works without advanced features after googling for drivers (and these particular drivers are a bitch to find. I suspect that I might not even have exactly the right ones, hence the feature lack :-/)

Network (onboard intel thing): Linux works out of the box, windows works after googling for drivers… yes. For those who haven’t spotted it, the /network card/ requires downloading drivers using /the network/ :-P

Network (atheros based wifi): Linux works out of the box, windows requires separate drivers

I was on a train at Amsterdam Sloterdijk, not intending to actually go anywhere; but then it started moving before I could get off. I figured I’d go to the first stop, get off, and take the first train back. It then turned out that this was a no-stop train to Russia, with none coming back for a month.

Thankfully, something went wrong, and we had to pull into a station in a snowy village in the middle of nowhere. Passengers were evacuated and sent to a mansion with N from Death Note and his arguing parents. N had a kitten, which mewed at most people, but when I came near it hugged my face. This showed that I was trustworthy, so N fixed our train and sent it back to Sloterdijk so I could get off \o/

>>> shas has joined #forum-disney
<shas> :o
>>> Melissa has joined #forum-disney
>>> Hypermicrospace has joined #forum-disney
<Shish> o____________o

(Hopefully there’s only one person in the world who understands quite how weird this would be…)

Sitting next to a cute girl in a lecture hall, our hands touched by accident. Rather than pull away, she presses hers closer; nothing obvious, but just a little closer than normal. I tentatively move my little finger over hers, thus the intention being obvious but she can still back out if she wants. She moves her hand further under mine and I move mine over hers until they’re overlapping; our fingers interlock, and we’re happy, knowing that we want to be together. Then we carry on quietly watching, nobody else in the room knowing what happened in our hearts ^_^

And then I woke up ;_______________;

Running through super mario world, I get to the end, but someone has kidnapped baby Yoshi. Looking around, I see that this entire world is at the front of a lecture hall, and the kidnapper is a student, running out the back. I can’t keep up, so I go to his seat and examine the things he left behind (a phone with some odd attachments). Other students yell at me for looking through the phone for information, claiming that he obviously left it in order to call in the ransom. I make a passing comment about the phone’s power cable being plugged in, which a guy with a broken jaw takes as a personal insult. Ignoring that, I run out, to find my dad’s car stolen.

Sometime later, we (not quite sure who my companions are, someone in a corset and skirt, didn’t see the face, and someone else) see the car and get it to stop. We confront the people in it including a generic chav and chavette, Mr. T., and some guy. The chav says “that guy said he’d get us one cheap” (pointing to the other guy). Said guy starts calmly walking off and whistling innocently, so I pull him back.

Somehow we end up at dinner with him, discussing wtf is up. He claims to be part of Moof’s international smuggling ring, dealing with ancient relics, nazi gold, etc. After explaining he gets a combat knife out; while I do manage to restrain him, the scene suddenly changes to the brazillian rainforest, just before a waterfall. The bodies of my dinner companions and I are in the water, which Renee (the cute agent from 24) is trying to recover. She’s still wearing the same suit o_O

After all being thrown over the edge, we end up at the bottom of the basin, dead bodies floating above; she’s noticed some old telephone poles with posters on, some of them advertising for a religious cult (Who I think saw Yoshi as the reincarnation of Jesus, and thus hired the smuggling ring to kidnap him). Having found this out, she tries to swim to the surface, but doesn’t have the bouyancy. I try to share some air with her and drag her up, but it’s not enough, and we both die.

Interpretations welcome XD

Needing an impromptu web browsing kiosk, I wonder if opera has any options which could be useful; so I try opera –help, and the first thing I see is -kioskhelp. Trying that option, it seems that it has all the features I need built in \o/

It also has a presentation mode, so with a little CSS you can have a web page which works equally well in a browser or as part of a slideshow~

And it’s still smaller and faster than firefox :P

Having spent several hours trying to figure out what was causing the following, it turns out that the selinux policy installer hadn’t noticed I was running SSH, and thus hadn’t loaded the module to allow it. “semodule -i /usr/share/selinux/refpolicy-strict/ssh.pp” loaded the module, then “restorecon -R -v /usr/sbin” reset the security tags to say that sshd belongs to ssh.

sshd[2454]: Accepted password for shish from 10.0.2.2 port 40878 ssh2
sshd[2457]: (pam_unix) session opened for user shish by (uid=0)
sshd[2457]: Unable to get valid context for shish, No valid tty
sshd[2457]: error: PAM: pam_open_session(): Authentication failure
sshd[2457]: error: Failed to get default security context for shish.Continuing in permissive mode
sshd[2454]: error: Failed to get default security context for shish.Continuing in permissive mode
sshd[2454]: error: security_compute_relabel(/dev/pts/1) failed: Invalid argument
sshd[2460]: error: Failed to get default security context for shish.Continuing in permissive mode
sshd[2446]: error: chown /dev/pts/0 0 0 failed: Permission denied
sshd[2446]: error: chmod /dev/pts/0 0666 failed: Permission denied

Walking into “the money shop”
Shish: I’d like to buy some money.
Assistant: We can do that, how much?
Shish: Ten pounds.
Assistant: And what currency would you like that in?
Shish: Pounds.
Assistant: You want ten pounds… in pounds?
Shish: Yes. How much will that cost me?
Assistant: That’ll cost you ten pounds.
Shish: A bit steep, isn’t it? Do I get a discount if I buy in bulk?
Assistant: …

Seeing a terrifyingly thin girl at the meat isle in sainsbury’s, I worry that should a gust of wind blow, she’d snap in half, and leak blood and guts all over the place, and I’d just stand there watching, becoming scarred for life. In order to prevent this, I sneak up behind her;
Shish: buuuuuy iiiiiiiit… buy the buuuuuuur-geeeeeeer…
Girl: Oh! Good lord you startled me! What are you doing there?
Shish: Encouraging you to buy, and hopefully eat, a burger.
Girl: You want me to look like that? (pointing to someone of average build)
Shish: Yes. Or even better, that. (pointing to a smartly dressed man walking down the isle with a cane and monocle)
Girl: He has a beard!
Shish: And a marvelous one at that. (calling out). Hello, good sir! Marvellous beard you have there! Were I a lady, I should find you quite dashing!
Man: And were I a lady, I should think you were dreamy~
(Shish and Man walk off, talking about top hats or somesuch. Something British.)
Girl: … wtf?

I discovered a shop which smells really nice, I shall have to go there again; I doubt I’ll buy anything, but it’d be a nice place to sit with a laptop and get some work done…

Shish: do you have small balls?
Assistant: I beg your pardon?
Shish: Small balls; I’m looking at these balls of wool, they’re all very large, and very expensive.
Assistant: I’m afraid we don’t…

Shish: I’d like to buy this house
Seller: That’ll be £10,000 please
Shish: And does that include the grass?
Seller: Excuse me?
Shish: The grass, in the garden. Is it included, or does it cost extra?
Seller: The grass is free, sir
Shish: Marvellous!
Many years later
Shish: So with my free grass, and my sheep, a lot of time, and some shears, I was able to get this wool at considerable discount!

Seeing an NHS “screening van”.

Shish: Hello, I’d like to have a screen.
Screener: What for?
Shish: This. (Gets a CRT out of his backpack. It is missing the glass plate.)
Screener: Um…
Shish: Up till now I’ve been letting the cathode rays directly into my eyes, but my co-workers keep saying “Go to the doctor’s! And get a decent screen!”. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but I had some time spare, saw this “NHS screening van”, and thought what the hell~

And some jokes which I came up with ages ago but never got round to posting:

Q) What’s the best type of ice cream to have if you need to get in to a car?
A) Carte’dor (car door!)

Q) What did the guy flaming headcrab zombie say to the girl flaming headcrab zombie?
A) Will you go out with me? (Zombies provide insufficient fuel for long term patio lighting!)

Q) How does a pirate measure his hard drive?
A) Gig-ARRRRR-bytes! (Any word with the syllable “ar” is fertile ground for a pirate joke!)

There is a “media” share, which anybody can read, and the media user can write to. I’ve connected to this share, but can’t write to it. My first thought is that I must be connected anonymously, so I right click -> disconnect… and nothing happens. Right click -> disconnect again, “this drive is not connected”. Hmm, explorer bug? Well, if it’s not connected, then I shall attempt to connect. So I go to connect to network drive, click “connect with different login details”, enter details for the media user, click connect, and … “this drive is already connected”, and then a second error message immediately follows “you cannot connect to the same share with two different accounts” (What sort of stupid limitiation is that? :-|). Well, at least it confirms that I am logging in with two different accounts, and thus used to be anonymous and am now media. Or does it? I reboot to get rid of the phantom connection, and try to make a new connection with the media login. It works, but isn’t writable! Giving up on the client side, I check the server logs: “connect to service media initially as user nobody”. Gaaaah, goddamn it windows, I explicitly said “connect as the media user”!

Gaaaah.

</rant>