Here is a great writeup about us. You know us, we who “waste” our time on the internet. Instead of watching TV like we are supposed to, we are looking for the mouse!

I just came across The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment.
This guy sat his windows-accustomed girlfriend in front of a fresh ubuntu install and had her perform some basic tasks. The somewhat expected result was that some things were no problem and other (simple) things were absolute roadblocks. I had to laugh at the description of trying to install the flashplayer plugin:

When it told her that she needed a plug-in she groaned, but clicked the link they gave her. It took her to the official Flash plug-in page, and gave her the option of downloading a gzipped tarball, an RPM or a YUM.

Because she’s using Ubuntu, the RPM and the YUM are going to be of no use - not that she knows this. Erin tried the .tar.gz, and it downloaded to her home folder. It opened in the archive manager, and she extracted it to the default. Then, she was lost. She tried double-clicking the file, and Ubuntu just asked her what she’d like to do with it. The option “run” results in it crashing. No clue was given to her that she should open up a terminal and type “./flashplayer-installer”. To be fair, there are links to installation instructions, but the average person acclimatised to Windows is not expecting to have to read complex information before installing a program - all they need to do is double click it. Obviously her attempts with the RPM and the YUM went nowhere. Frustrated, Erin conceded defeat.

This mirrors my first experiences with installs so much! I remember looking at download options and it was all greek to me: deb? rpm? yum? tar.gz? WTF?.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be so complicated. Nobody needs to worry about tarballs and stuff.
Installing things gets dead easy once you’ve learned how to use the Synaptic package manager.
But a Windows user would never even think about looking for something like that because there is just no equivalent in the Windows world! Imagine a program the would help you install every program for Windows that you can find on the internet. It boggles the mind! But that is exactly what a package manager does. And it makes it dead easy.

The package manager is the one feature that should be more prominently advertised. I think it is THE killer app that every new user should know about right away!

Ever since we started playing Lego StarWars on the PS2 with the kids, my older son has one corner of his mind dedicated to this game at all times.
No matter what we do or where we are, he will suddenly share an idea he just had or ask a question about the game.

“In Episode one, in the third door, when we go there again we should check on that balcony for a container!” “Yes dear.” “Do you know if we can jump throuh that window in Episode two in the fifth door?” “I don’t even know what you are talking about.” “Well we went there and then the robots came and there was this thing…” “Help!”

I wish my mind would still work like that.

which-film-hero.are-you-really
I’m Neo!
Yeah!

which-tv-series-hero.are-you-really
But not MacGyver, shoot!

Every once in while, I get an email asking about my mythtv box (my HTPC in a HOL case from ikea) which really tickles my fancy. I love answering questions in english and german, just mail me!

In case you are planning to do something like that yourself, here are some things to keep in mind.

General working of the box -> really good.

Airflow -> not so good. The box is open and air is not a problem as such but you have no controlled airflow! In a normal computercase you would set up fans as one in the front blowing in and another one or two blowing out on the backside. That way you can actually form the airflow to go over your hottest hardware.
In the Hol-case - not working. The airflow diffuses in the box and you need to setup your fans to blow directly on the critical hardware, in an HTPC especially, have one blow on the harddrives.

The other big problem: Dust! Oh my crap, the DUST! It’s out of control! I have no solution other than vacuuming the inside at least once a month.

The third problem is electromagnetic emission. Now even thinking about this is oh so very german of me, we worry about things like that! With a wooden case like this you have no shielding whatsoever. What you think about that and what effects it could have on your health is your decision alone.

Now, I just realized the solution to all three problems would be a plain computercase inside the HOL with all the peripherals inside and just the connection cables coming out. Something to keep in mind. hmmm

That’s all I can think for now, feel free to ask questions.

you might want to check that harddrive.
Never crossed my mind.

I’ve looked at processes eating up CPU cycles, I’ve thrown more and more memory at this thing but the system still felt weird, audio was sloooooooow, things here and there never worked right.
The one thing I never tested was the speed of the harddrive.

There is a nice little tool here http://www.hdtune.com/ that has a harddrive benchmark I was actually looking for something completly different but what the heck…

You know you’re in trouble if you see that the chart should go up to 60MB/sec and yours only goes up to 2.5 MB/sec!

Something that I would like to meet and punch in the face has switched my harddrive into PIO Mode. That means asscrwalingslow.

Apparently the Microsoft drivers weren’t willing to work with my nForce2 chipset anymore. Looking at forum posts it seems to be a common problem. It took some searching on the nvidia site to find recent drivers but installing them fixed the problem oh so nicley!

Suddenly this thing feels like a nice machine again.

So in retrospect I don’t know why harddrive speed never crossed my mind but I will remember this the next time I run into inexpliciable problems.

Sometimes something changes and only then you realize how much you assumed about the “Normal Way” of things.

Under Ubuntu Linux, clicking in the address bar of Firefox does not automatically select the address. I had no idea how much I depended on that feature. On one of my standard surfin-drive-bys I happened upon the solution in the guide about switching to Ubuntu from Windows. No, that was definitely not what I was looking for originally!

Making Firefox Autoselect Text in the Address Bar

Under Windows, clicking on the address bar in Firefox automatically selects the entire text. By default Firefox running under Ubuntu does not. To achieve the same functionality in Ubuntu follow these steps:

1. In the address bar, type about:config
2. In the filter text field, type browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
3. Set this value to, true by double clicking (or right clicking and selecting toggle.)
4. Restart Firefox.

Easy as pie.

I’m turning my children into geeks.

Yes, that’s my plan. Turn them into geeks. That way I might be able to actually have a conversation with them ever so often once they’ve hit puberty and keep them away from drugs. Not that all drugs are bad, I have had my fair share of all things hemp but these are my kids I can’t get picky here!

My Plan involves teaching them to program and build robots with them and introducing them to role playing games. The problem here is that I never played these games myself! Just like with everything else I only read about it.
A friend once said about himself “I don’t live life, I just read life!” and I must say that seems to be true for me as well.
Anyway.
I found some information and I’ll collect the links here, so that you can read about it too:

Fist of all here is something extraordinary: Two books by H.G. Wells about playing games on the floor with his kids, building forts with building blocks, what the floor should be like and everything. Wonderful stories!

Next here are two threads from the Hive Mind: Dungeons and Dragons for a 10-year-old and D&D for a 10 year old boy. Really good advice there.

I found three sites with information about playing with children:
Young Person’s Adventure League
RPGs for Kids
Roleplaying Games for Kids

Some recommend commercial games but I was actually more looking for some general guidance. My search turned up these threads about fathers (it’s never the mothers!) playing with their sons and daughters.
Minis, Narr Techniques, and my 9 year old daughter
Techniques and my friend’s 9 year old daughter
Prydain, the Hobbit, Pendragon … Fun for Kids!

But before I start developing an adventure for my sons I probably should play a RPG myself. Why do I not know anybody who plays RPG’s? Must reactivate circle of friends. Someone must know someone…

The next person telling me that “Money isn’t everything!” gets a kick in the head!

Yeah, money doesn’t make you happy but I can tell you from personal experience that not having money doesn’t get me all nicey and happy either!

trying to get into things like prototype and mootools is killing me! my head feels like it is going to explode any second now from all the new knowledge I try to cram in there.

Despite being busy, sometimes all a girl needs is a little handiwork ! and now everybody get your mind out of the gutter!

I have mentioned before that I wanted to build a computer for my kids to play on.
It’s done:

This is what it looks like when it is stored away:

To set it up I just put that little table with the keyboard and the mouse in front of it, put a cushion on the floor and plug it in for power.

And here you can see my little son actually sitting down and concentrating on something! A rare sight! He draws in tuxpaint, which is a paint program for children with funny sound snippets as feedback when you draw. A great way to learn how a mouse works and how to move it in a precise way. My little boy figured that out in scaringly few minutes.

Yes, it runs Linux, Xubuntu to be precise. In my left-over hardware was an 800MHz Athlon with just 300+ MB RAM to be found and I wanted to go with a lightweight system for that.

But is not Linux exclusivly. It dualboots with Windows 98. I have all this software here, “Bob the Builder” and “Findus und Petterson” and lots more. They are all wonderful little games, the kids love to play them but they were a pain to setup under wine. I have heard that even World of Warcraft runs under wine and I have hard time believing that. Maybe if you run something big like WoW under wine you tend to expect problems and have fun solving them.
But children? Children today expect all technology to work at all times! Why should they think differently? Try to explain to a little boy that he just lost his settings and has to start over again. Yeah, have fun with that!

One of my many unused copies of Windows98 now serves very well as the foundation for these games, they run just fine under that, better tha(e?)n under WindowsXP!

Most of the time though my kids just want to paint and stamp with the funny penguin.